


The Squad

by b99xperaltiago



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cancer, Die Hard References, Fluff, Halloween heist, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Illness, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Peraltiago moments, Pregnancy, Rollercoaster of Emotions, Season/Series 06 Spoilers, Spoilers for season 6, fangirl moments thx to charles, not for some people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2019-10-04 11:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17303522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b99xperaltiago/pseuds/b99xperaltiago
Summary: With perps to arrest, cases to be assigned and closed by Brooklyn's best, a wedding to plan, and other drama, the Nine-Nine is to undergo a lot of major turning points in one year. Some events will be laughable in a few years time, but some will cause the entire groups' lives forever.(A story set out like a season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, with 22 chapters acting as "episodes")





	1. Episode 1 - Sick Day

**Author's Note:**

> (PLEASE READ ALL OF BELOW!)
> 
> I must mention I will continue writing Baby Nine-Nine, it's just I wanted to get this out of my system. Updates may be slow on this story, as it takes a while to write out the important things I'll need for each chapter, and with school starting back up after the weekend, I'm gonna be crammed with school stuff.  
> \---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
> I will say now, this story will not be for some people. There will be serious topics discussed, but I promise to make nothing of a joke with them. I have been effected with the thing that will be the major plot here, and I don't intend to make it a joke, as I know some people will have as well. 
> 
> I have got every chapter briefly planned out, and much like the seasons of the show, there will be a Halloween episode, the heist included! (The nine-nine's halloween isn't complete without the heist!) Also, there will be old characters popping up for an episode, and I can assure you that Doug Judy will make an appearance in one, I just can't say which, you'll have to wait and see!
> 
> I CAN PROMISE NOW THIS DOES HAVE A HAPPY ENDING! It's just a long road to get there.
> 
> Anyway, enough of an A/N, lets get to the actual story! Enjoy!

_**Synopsis:** Jake and Amy both get sent home from the precinct with suspected food poisoning and Terry gets a little too overboard with Rosa and Alicia's new engagement._  
_**Genre:** Comedy_

* * *

Amy stood in front of a board, containing pictures and tape joining them up, as well as a map of New York. Her thourough attention is brought away by one of her uniformed officers calling her name behind her.

She turns to see Gracia rushing toward her. "Sarge, there's been a incident in the evidence room, apparently a mix up with boxes, but it's chaotic in there. Like a massacre!" She informs.

Amy nods, beginning to move the board away. "Thank you, I'll be right in there."

Gracia leaves, rushing back the way she came and Amy turns to make her way to the evidence locker. Halfway there, she bumps into Rosa.

"Hey, what are you doing down here?"

Rosa crosses her arms over her chest. "I need to talk to Jennings."

Amy tilts her head and sighs. "You're not going to humiliate him are you?"

"No, Santiago, I would never do that."

Amy raises her eyebrows at her but chooses not to say anything. Rosa takes a second glance to the sergeant and her facial experssion changes, although granted not a lot.

"You feeling okay, Santiago? You're looking paler than usual."

Amy nods, before slowly shaking her head. "No, not really. But I can't do much, I've got a squad to look after, I can't excatly go home just because I feel ill."

"So you're gonna throw up, aren't you?" Rosa guesses.

Amy nods again. "Oh, most definitely."

"Do you want me to come in with you? Not into the stall, but into the bathroom."

"That would be nice, thank you." She says, taken aback slightly by Rosa's sudden considerate behaviour.  
They then both turn in the opposite direction and walk toward the bathroom.

* * *

A few minutes later, Amy appears out of one of the stalls looking slightly dishevelled. Rosa stares at her with wide eyes as she washes her hands and mouth out.

"Wow, that was bad." She simply says after a minute of silence.

"You can tell me again." Amy sighs.

"Why did you start throwing up like that?"

"It might be because of the place Jake and I went to last night for dinner. I told him it didn't seem right."

"So why hasn't he gotten sick?" Rosa wonders.

"Have you seen the way he eats? His stomach is probably immune to food poisoning at this point." She lets out a small smile as they make their way over to the bathroom door.

Once on the other side, Amy turns to go back to the bullpen. Rosa races in front and stops her in her tracks. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Back to work. There's an issue in the evidence locker. It's a massacre, apparently."

Rosa shakes her head and glares at the sergeant in front of her. "Oh no you don't. Not after that massacre. Go home, Santiago."

"But-" she tries to negotiate before Rosa buts in strictly.

"No buts, go!" She instructs, pointing over to the elevator that was just in view.

Amy groans before walking in that direction. Rosa watches her enter the elevator, not in a creepy way but to make sure she doesn't bolt back to work when she wasn't looking. She waits by the elevator for a moment before heading back up to the fourth floor to inform Holt of the events, forgetting about her issue with Jennings.

* * *

"Santiago? That's an odd one." Holt sighs, leaning back in his chair.

"According to her it was due to wrongly cooked food, captain." Rosa adds.

"Well, thank you for sending her home, detective," Rosa nods and he continues, "be sure to let Peralta know where she is. Dismissed."

Rosa leaves the office and walks quickly to Jake's desk on the other side of the bullpen. When she reaches the fellow detectives desk, she calls on him. "You wife has been sent home."

Jake looks up to her, confused on what she meant. "Why?"

"She threw up pretty badly from that place you guys went to last night."

Jake nods. "Yeah, it was pretty bad."

"Are you feeling ill?" She raises her eyebrows at her friend.

Jake mumbles, shaking his hand from side to side. Rosa leaves and Jake returns to doing the mountain of paperwork he had been neglecting for a while now. His attention is brought back to the bullpen at the sound of Charles humming at his desk.

He sighs, knowing that his friend had heard that conversation and was possibly jumping to conclusions. Ah, who was he kidding? Charles had obviously jumped to a certain conclusion. "What do you want buddy?" He asks, already knowing the answer.

"So... Amy's sick, huh?" Charles says happily, walking toward Jake's desk with a skip in his step.

Jake turns his attention back to the paperwork. "Apparently so."

Charles takes a seat in the chair next to his best friends desk. "Where did you guys eat last night?"

Jake sighs as he looks reluctantly back up to his friend. "That new food truck by the bodega."

Charles immediately looks hurt at Jake's statement. "What? No! That place doesn't get people sick. It gives you delight on your tongue like a passionate French kiss."

Jake scrunches his face up in disgust. "Gross."

"Do you know what I'm thinking it is?" He changes the subject, looking hopeful to his friend.

Jake holds in a breath as he repeats, "Don't say it" more times than he said "cool" after receiving his fifteen year prison sentence three years ago.

Charles cuts in. "I'm thinking it's morning sickness."

Jake swings his head back in frustration. "Oh, for god's sake."

"When was the last time you guys had sex?" He turns to his friend and asks.

"I am not answering that!" Jake yells before jumping up from his desk and walking to the break room to escape his friend.

* * *

Terry is standing behind the podium at the front of the briefing room, looking at the detectives who were waiting for him to begin. He got straight into it, beginning with the case on the top of his list, highlighted in a bright shade of red. "There has been another murder-"

"Third one in a week?" Jake suddenly interrupts, without making much thought about it.

Holt glares at the detective with his normal face. "Peralta, consider this your first warning."

Jake looks puzzled, raising his shoulders. "What? I didn't do anything." He defends.

"Second warning." Holt says to the detective, who immediately slumps down in his seat and goes quiet. He turns back to Terry. "Go on, Jeffords."

Terry nods and continues from where he was. "The victims were thirty-eight year old Kathy Arellano and her two year old son Samuel. Now we believe this may be tied to the Johnes and Ball murders. I want two of my finest detectives on this and to treat it with the utmost respect. Diaz and Peralta, I want you on this as soon as you can."

Someone in the seat in front of Jake and Charles, who were obviously sitting side-by-side, raises their hand. Terry calls on them, and she responds with a snarky comment. "Are you sure Peralta is your best option? He was just given warnings by his captain like a fifth-grader."

Jake looks to the beat cop in front of him in disbelief. "Who even are you?" He asks.

Holt buts in. "That's enough. Peralta is a great detective-"

"Why thank you, captain."

"I didn't finish," Holt places his hand out and glares to Jake before waiting a beat to continue, "even if he does act like a toddler most of the time."

Jake looks confused again before turning his attention to Rosa, who had snorted with laughter in the seat behind him.

Holt dissmisses the squad and they all get up to leave. Rosa quickly gets in front of Jake before he can get back into the bullpen. "Are you sure you're up to going to a murder scene? Your wife was sent home with pretty bad food poisoning today and you said yourself earlier you were feeling rough."

Jake nods. "I'm gonna be fine."

They begin to leave before Jake stops in his tracks again. "Speaking of my wife, was it weird how much that beat cop reminded me of her?"

Rosa nods. "Yes."

"Okay, let's go."

* * *

Less than an hour later, Rosa was standing on the streets of Brooklyn, grimacing at every single heave that came from the male detective next to her.

"You were right!" Jake hoarsly calls in between gags, his head still completely enveloped into the trash can.

"I know, I'm always right." Rosa replies.

A uniformed officer runs out of the building the two detectives were supposed to be in and had actually only been in briefly. Jumping down the stairs he asks, "Is your friend alright?"

Rosa, over the loud noises coming from Jake beside her, sarcastically reponds, "does it look like he is?"

The officer down to the floor and whispers, "no, sorry," before walking sadly back into the building.

Rosa looks back in the direction of Jake to see his head slightly raised out of the bin. "Are you done?" She asks.

Jake nods slowly. "I think so."

"Good, so I can tell you to go home like I did your wife." Rosa glares at her friend as she crosses her arms across her chest.

"Okay, fine." He huffs.

Rosa can't help but watch him get into his car and drive off, but her gaze is drawn to the trash can next to her after a moment. She rolls her eyes, a disgusted look appearing on her face as she walks back into the building.

* * *

 Rosa bursts through the bullpen, which in turn makes Terry stand up quickly from his desk in surprise. "Diaz, what are you doing here? And where's Peralta?"

"I sent him home." Rosa responds.

"Why?"

"Why?! Because he's got food poisoning like Amy."

Before another word between the detective and sergeant can be said, Charles happily skips out from the break room, his eyes closed with a beaming smile. "Reason number twenty-eight, Jake got really defensive when I asked about the sex life between them both and didn't give up the deets."

"Oh, will you let this go?" Terry begged, "Amy's not pregnant, Boyle!"

"And how would you know?" The short male detective opens his eyes and looks crossly to the tall sergeant next to him.

"Because Jake's sick too!" Rosa buts in.

Terry agrees and adds, "He's just been sent home."

"But he was just at the murder scene with Rosa."

Rosa nods and says, "yeah, and he took one glimpse at the body bag and he was out the door again to throw up in the trash can out front. It's real lucky the apartment was on the bottom floor, he almost didn't make it."

"And when has Jake actually told you about his sex life?" Terry raises his eyebrows at the shorter detective.

Charles goes weird, stammering and wobbling on his feet, reminding Terry much of like when Cagney and/or Lacey are being asked who did it when it's clear they are the ones that caused the trouble. The detective then quickly clears off to his desk.

Rosa rolls her eyes and walks to Holt's office again to alert him of the disappearence of another one of his detectives and Terry sits back down at his desk to continue his yogurt that had been dispelled from his hand when Rosa had stormed in a minute or so ago. A few seconds pass and the elevator dings before Alicia steps off.

She enters the bullpen and Terry's standing up again, a huge smile brewing on his face. "Hey, there's the future Mrs Diaz! Or is she taking your last name?"

Alicia can't help but smile at the large sergeant. She shakes her head slightly. "We haven't really talked about it much." She sighs, much to Terry's dismay.

"Oh," he obviously sounds disappointed, "I thought you would have."

Alicia looks away and glances quickly around the bullpen. "Have you seen Rosa?" She asks, her eyes falling upon the sergeant again.

He nods his head and points over to the captain's office. "She's in there."

Alicia looks to see Rosa subtly glancing passed her shoulder, smiling slightly over at her. Alicia smiles and waves back to her fiancée before daring herself to look back to Terry when his voice is heard again.

"Are you guys going out somewhere?" He questions.

"Ur, yeah, we're meeting my parents and we're going for lunch. They couldn't do dinner, so this seemed like the best alternative."

"It sounds amazing." He says dreamily in response.

His trance was broken by Charles complaining on the other side of the bullpen. "Jeez, Sarge, calm it down, this is a work place." The detective tells him.

Terry moves away from his desk an inch or so and yells at the much shorter detective. "You're kidding me right?! You're asking me to calm it down?!"

Charles nods as if it was completely obvious to the sergeant. "Well, yeah."

* * *

Jake fumbles through the door, throws his keys in the bowl Amy had placed by the door and kicks off his shoes before beginning to slowly move around the apartment. Any fast movements would cause a wave of nausea that he didn't want to be right before another vomiting session. He calls out for Amy a few times, knowing full well she should be there.

A few calls later, he hears his wife's voice coming muffled from just off the bedroom.

He follows the noise through to the bathroom to find Amy laying on the floor, her head rested against the seat of the toilet. He slowly walks in and slides his way down the wall to sit on the opposite side, allowing his head to fall against the wall behind him.

"What are doing here?" Amy hoarsely asks, "shouldn't you be at work?"

"Yeah, but you're not the only one who's sick."

"Oh, god."

"That place was terrible." Jake sighs.

Amy nods silently with agreement.

Jake looks weakly back to Amy. "How are you feeling?" He questions.

"Still pretty shit, but I think the worst of it's over."

Jake turns his weak look to a jealous glare. "Lucky thing." He mumbles.

"What about you?" Amy raises her eyebrow.

"I can feel it getting worse in the pit of my stomach, and it hurts like crazy."

A silence falls upon them both before Amy quietly breaks it with a small smile, one that was hardly noticeable. " _'It Hurts Like Crazy'_ \- title of your sex tape."

Jake tries to look at her sternly, but he breaks out in a smile. That was what he needed at the moment, just a little humour.

Amy looks back up after a minute. "Do you know what the time is?"

Jake mumbles. "I don't know. It's gotta be at least one by now."

"What? How?" Amy asks, slowly moving her head up to reduce the possibility of whiplash.

Jake shrugs his shoulder slightly, looking to her as if she was acting weird. "Ames, are you sure you're okay?"

"What? Yeah, just I don't understand how went really quickly."

"You've only been home like three hours."

Amy nods. "And I've spent two and a half in here."

* * *

As Rosa entered the bullpen again, Terry props his head up immediately. He stops her from walking straight to her desk by calling out her name. "Hey, Diaz, how was lunch with Alicia's parents?"

"Sarge, not offense, but you're starting to act like a bit of a Boyle."

Charles perks his ears up. "I do not act like this. Terry is going way overboard."

"Who was the guy who came up with thirty reasons why he thought Amy was pregnant."

"It was actually twenty-eight that were said out loud... up to forty-four were in my head, if only Terry had let me say them."

"See, you are overly obsessed in Jake and Amy's relationship. And Terry is overly obsessed with mine and Alicia's."

"What?! When did I become a part of this conversation. You were dishing on Boyle, not me." Terry throws his hands up.

"Look it doesn't matter who I was dishing on. Boyle calm down around Jake and Amy, Sarge calm down in front of Rosa and Alicia."

Terry sighs slowly. "Okay, I can't do that. Terry has no problem with that."

Rosa finally nods and goes back over to her desk. She is brought back to two years ago, when Terry was passionately trying to get Rosa to see Alicia's flirting. She brings her head up and stands from the chair after a minute of reminiscing and calls across the bullpen. "Hey, Terry," the sergeant looks up after hearing his name and stares at the detective with curiosity. It takes her a moment before she asks, "how would you like to be my man of honor?"

"What's that?" Terry asks, his face scrunched in confusion.

"Basically a maid of honor, but for a guy." Rosa replies.

Terry immediately nods and jumps up from his desk, running over to Rosa's and hugging her, much against her will. "I would be honored."

"That's great, but what have I said about touching?" Rosa asks, her arms not responding due to the tightness of the sergeants hug around her.

"Terry's too happy to care!"

* * *

Amy brought in a tray that was holding two bowls, both of them producing a lot of steam into her face, into the bedroom to see her husband sprawled out on his side, his arm going over to her side slightly. She goes over and places one of the bowls on his bedside table before going over to her sit and sitting up in bed.

Jake felt the extra weight against the mattress and begins to stir before waking up completely.

"Sorry." Amy weakly smiles, apologizing for waking him up.

He swallows dryly before slowly sitting up. He looks to his bedside table and notices the bowl. "What's this?" He wonders, his voice hoarse.

"Just some soup. It's my mom's recipe."

Jake looks up to Amy with caution. "Thanks, babe, but I'm not really that hungry right now."

"My mom brought it over." Amy breaks in, knowing why we was refusing to eat.

He reaches over and grabs the bowl. "Oh, yeah, then I'll try some."

Amy glares to him slightly. "You're unbelievable."

"And you're a terrible cook." Jake breaks in before taking a spoonful of the soup.

Less than a second later, he puts the bowl back down on the bedside table and rushes off the bathroom. Amy carefully jumps up and follows him, finding him over the sink rather than the toilet.

"What was that?" Amy asks, staring at him with a look of concern.

"It was like fire, Ames."

"Was the fact that it was hot not more given away by the mountain of steam on top of it?"

Jake glares at her from the sink. "I won't lie, you mom knows how to make soup, although it's very hot."

"Next time blow on it, okay." She instructs before seeing a small smile creeping on his face. She raises her finger and calls out on him. "No! No! No! Don't even think about it!"

"You made one." He tries to defend himself.

"And it was terrible. Get you mind out of the gutter, Jake, that's disgusting."

"But you've got to admit, it works!" He declares as Amy rolls her eyes and walks back toward the bed.

* * *

Rosa entered the apartment to find Alicia sitting on the couch opposite the door, working intently on her laptop. She hears the door close behind her fiancée, so looks up and smiles at her widely, closing the laptop and putting it on the coffee table by her feet.

"Hey, how was the rest of your afternoon?" Alicia questions.

"Good, but I need to tell you something, and you've got to promise not to get mad."

Alicia raises her eyebrows and shakes her head subtly. "Whatever it is, I won't get mad. Even if you murdered someone."

Rosa smiles slightly and nods. "Okay, well, I kinda asked Terry to be my man of honour a the wedding."

Alicia shrugs. "Why would that make me mad?" She asks after a moment.

"Because I know how much he bothers you about our relationship."

"And yet Jake asked Charles to be his best man when  Charles is very over-the-top with Jake and Amy's relationship," she mentions, "I don't have a problem with it."

"Are you sure?" Rosa wonders.

"It's your decision, babe, it's not up to me. You can pick whoever you want."

"Really?"

Alicia nods a final time. "Yes."

"Okay, I'm glad to hear it."

Alicia looks up to Rosa and adds, "Also, I'm pretty sure Terry will be great with all the wedding help."

"Yeah, he has a weird talent for things like that." Rosa nods.

* * *

Amy rushes into the bathroom, even though it was evident the worst of what had suddenly happened was over by Jake lifting his head from out of the bowl. She knelt down by his back and rubbed circles up and down his spine.

"You feel better now?" She asks once it was completely done.

Jake shakes his head. "I was hoping I would, but my stomach still hurts."

"I thought you'd be immune to food poisoning at this point." Amy sighs, sitting to her husband's side.

"What makes you think that?" Jake hoarsely asks, facing his wife with his eyebrows raised.

"From all the shit you eat." Amy responds, holding of a giggle.

 Jake glares to her. "Just because your food poisoning has magically disappeared, doesn't mean you can pick straight on me."

Amy nods along. "Right, of course, I'm sorry."

Jake slowly stands up, flushing the toilet as he did. He brushes his teeth with Amy timing him, due to his request (which made Amy know he must have a fever or something because he had never done that). After, Amy leads him out of the bathroom and back into the living room.

He climbs on to the couch and turns to face the back of the couch. That was until Amy calls on him.

"Hey, seen as your not well, how about I let you watch Die Hard?"

His eyes light up as a huge grin appears on his face. "Yeah!"

Amy laughs and puts on the movie, it already being in the DVD player, because it was rare to take it out because if she did, it would only find it's place back there days later. She then joins her husband on the couch, pulling him to rest on her shoulder. She grabs the large throw from behind them and drapes it over Jake's shoulder just as the movie was starting.

And ten minutes later, she looks to her side to see Jake fast asleep, snoring subtly and making her laugh quietly, to make sure she didn't wake him up. Even while sick, he still had his charm.


	2. Episode 2 - The Test

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now with Episode 2! Enjoy!

_**Synopsis:** Charles convinces Gina to try and help nurse Jake back to health, while Holt helps Amy through a mental breakdown in the evidence room regarding a test._   
_**Genre:** Comedy, Hurt/Comfort_

* * *

Amy opens the door to her and Jake's apartment to find Charles standing in the middle of the living room. She stares at him blankly before slowly asking, "Boyle, what are you doing here?"

"I brought Jake some of that bread I told you about the other day and the homemade applesauce for him to try, just to see if that would make him feel any better."

Amy looks curiously. "He threw up after, didn't he?" She asks, a feeling in her gut that informed her that he did.

Charles quickly nods his head. "Yeah, ten minutes later. Sent Gina out of the apartment quicker than light."

Amy lets out a single laugh before crossing her arms over her chest. "Well, thanks for trying. I'm gonna see if starving him for twenty-four hours works. It did when I was a kid."

"Why didn't you try that with him already?" Charles questions.

"Because he's Jake. If I left him alone in the kitchen for two minutes, I'd come back in and he'd be eating," Amy sighs, exhaustion pouring out, which was clear seen as the past nine hour shift had made her a little listless, "every single time, no matter how many times I told him not to." She quietly adds.

"Yeah, there's somethings about Jake that will never change no matter how much you poke about with it." Charles laughs.

Amy nods and smiles, a laugh escaping for a second before the room fills with silence.

Charles turns back to her after naturally losing eye contact and smiles, pointing to the door. "Well, I should get going. Genevieve will want help trying to get Nikolaj to bed."

Amy follows him to the door. "Where is Jake?" She asks before the detective can walk down the hall.

"Oh, sorry, he's passed out of the bathroom floor. Been out for thirty minutes or so now."

Amy nods and thanks him, waving to the detective as she shuts the door. Immediately after their apartment is closed off from the hallway and possibly spying neighbours, she makes a beeline to the bathroom. As she passes through the bedroom, she grabs one of her many blankets from the bed and wraps it over one of her forearms as she stops and stares at the back of her ailing husband, who was sitting to one side, his head rested against the seat of the toilet. She smiles before kneeling down, placing the blanket over his shoulders.

"Hey, babe, I'm back," she whispers, trying not to wake him, which she knew he would be any minute now anyway.

She kisses his cheek gently, unable to move around him much, as she runs her finger through his hair.

"Look, I know you're gonna be up in like ten minutes and that I can really wait but I can easily tell you again when you're actually alert of what I'm saying," she smiles, "do you remember that test you were asking me to take with great demand?" She asks, "well, I took it, and I passed."

When her husband didn't respond, she doesn't continue, knowing to tell him again when he woke up. She kisses his cheek again before standing up.

As she quietly leaves the bathroom, she smiles back at him and whispers, "I'll see you in a little bit." She says before leaving the bathroom, shutting the door an inch on her way out.

* * *

**Flashback - Two Days Previously:**

Upon entering the fourth floor bullpen, Charles immediately jumps up from his desk to greet his friend. Although when he turns to face the elevator, he is met with the face of Amy instead of Jake. "Hey, Amy," he sighs, turning back to his desk before a realization hits him. He turns back around and smiles broadly. "What? If your here, does that mean Jake is too?"

Amy sighs and shakes her head. "No, sorry, Boyle."

"That's the second day in a row now," the detective huffs, "how'd come you got better faster than Jake?"

"Hey, I still have my rough moments." She tells him before she goes over at sits in the chair next to the desk. She sighs and responds, "Charles, I'm thinking that

Jake might have some sort of stomach flu instead, he's got all the common symptoms: headache, nausea and vomiting, abdominal pain, loss of appetite."

"Will he be okay?" Charles fills his voice with worry.

"Of course he will, he's Jake. Just give him a couple more days. If he's not better by then, I'll take him to see a doctor."

Before Amy can leave, Charles stops her. "You know what I should do? The Boyle family dates back decades of making homemade applesauce that is supposedly great at curing things like this. Maybe I can whip some up and bring it to him. Maybe bring some of the newly made loaf of bread I cooked up with Nikolaj last night."

Amy nods. "Great, you go do that." She tells him before going toward the captain's office.

* * *

**Present Day:**

Over the loud screaming from the frustrated toddler, Gina opens her apartment door to be greeted by Charles beaming widely.

"What do you want?" Gina questions, not bothering to greet the older man (he was over at the apartment enough to get the jist of the fact she didn't want him there).

"I was just wondering if maybe you'd help me with something." Charles speaks over the tantruming toddler, who had now found her mother by the door.

Gina sighs, sending the child on look for her father somewhere else in the apartment. "Sorry, Charles, but I said after I left the Nine-Nine, I wouldn't help with anyone's cases or problems."

"It's not a case, it's about Jake," Charles butts in, making Gina perk her ears up, "he's sick and you're the only one who knows him better than he knows himself."

"What kind of sick?" Gina wonders.

"Amy says he has stomach flu, but it was thought to be food poisoning at first." Charles sighs.

"Jake doesn't get food poisoning anymore, not with the way he eats." Gina responds.

Charles nods. "That's what Amy said."

A silence hits them both, with the exception of Iggy screaming for something from the back of the apartment. Charles looks back to Gina. "What do you say? Will you help me? Will you help Jake?"

Gina huffs. "Fine, but only for Jake, not to help you."

Charles smiles widely at his ex-lover, ex-step-sister. "Great! Let's go!"

Gina raises her eyebrows. "Wait? Now? As in go now?"

"Well, yeah." Charles nods as if the answer was obvious.

Gina holds up a finger telling him to wait a minute and shuts the door as she goes back into the apartment. After a few minutes, Charles is starting to believe that she isn't coming back out until, as if on cue, the door opens again showing Gina dressed in her jacket and placing her keys to the apartment in her coat pocket.

"Come on then." She leads him away from the apartment and down the hallway of the building.

* * *

Charles quietly opens the apartment door to Jake and Amy's place using his own key. He didn't expect an answer if he knocked, seen as Amy was at the precinct and there was a large likelihood Jake wouldn't want to move even if he could, so he found it easier to use the key he swore would only be used for emergencies.  
The living room was empty, the kitchen was surprisingly a little messy, with plates and bowls lying dirty in the sink, and the bedroom door was closed. As Charles approaches the blocked off room, Gina whispers over to him.

"What are you doing?" She asks.

"I'm going to see if Jake's in here." He replies, almost on the verge of talking normally in the dead silent apartment.

He slowly creaks open the bedroom door to find the room pitch black. On closer examination, he sees a sheet covering the window, along with a crack that allowed him to see that the blind was pulled too. Jake was sprawled out on the bed, head buried in one of the multiple pillows that filled the bed. He looked as if he had collapsed out of exhaustion and had been knocked out cold since.

Charles slowly retreats from the room, quietly shutting the door behind him to stop from waking his sleeping friend. As he turns back to the living room, he sees Gina snooping through the dishes in the sink.

"He's passed out in bed." Charles tells her from across the room.

He then goes over to the kitchen, placing the box with the bread and applesauce in on the side. He leans over the counter and looks curiously at what Gina was doing. Eventually, he decides to speak up. "What are you doing?" He asks, making her turn from looking through one of the cupboards.

"I'm looking for the cleaning stuff. If Jake's sick, he can't stay in this filthy environment. I always find that if Iggy's sick, living in a clean apartment can sometimes help."

"So you're going to clean the apartment?" Charles asks, his eyebrows raised.

"If I can find the cleaning stuff, yeah." She replies, looking through the sixth or seventh cabinet. Once that one comes off with no hurrah, she groans, turning back to the detective. "Why does Amy have to be so pristine about everything? It's like she's trying to keep her apartment a pit."

* * *

"Santiago," a familiar, monotone voice pulls Amy from her trance she must have fell into ages ago, "are you feeling okay?"

Amy looks up to see her captain standing opposite her desk. She quickly gets to her feet and nods. "Yes, sir. If you don't mind me asking, why do you suspect I'm not?"

"It's just several of your officers reported to me that you didn't appear to give the morning briefing and that you've been sitting at your desk in a sleep-like status." Holt responds.

"I didn't show up for the morning briefing?" Amy questions, raising her eyebrows. She slumps back to into her desk chair and sighs. "I'm an awful sergeant, I can't even attend my own briefing." With that sentence, she finds her eyes welling up uncontrollably.

"Are you crying?" Holt asks, leaning forward slightly and inching his head closer.

Amy wipes her eyes with her hands and sniffs loudly. "No." She denies, grabbing a tissue from her desk drawer anyway.

"Are you sure you're fit to be at work? There is a lot on your plate right now."

"Yes, captain, I'm fine." She responds, straightening up her posture in her seat.

A moment passes before Holt breaks the silence. "How is Peralta?" He wonders.

Amy smiles a little, nodding slightly. "He's okay. I'm pretty sure he's getting over whatever he has, which is a good sign."

Holt lets out a rare smile and nods too. "It's too quiet for me. I do wonder sometimes what he might be up to in the bullpen because it is too quiet until I realise that he isn't here and in fact at your apartment."

"It's weird for me too." Amy smiles, which soon disappears when her head races over the test Jake had been pushing her to take for a couple of days.

It's not that she didn't want to take the test, because she did. It's just she couldn't find the time to put aside the time needed.

Before she can go too deep again, she notices Holt begin to walk away. She calls out for him, standing up from the chair and making him stop to turn around.

"What's wrong, Santiago?" He wonders.

"Would I be able to go on my break now?" She questions, fumbling around with her hands behind her desk.

Holt raises his eyebrows slightly. "Right now? It's only eleven am." He sounds a little shocked by her early request, really shocked by her request at all. Amy nods in response, so he merely shrugs his shoulders. "Okay." He says before walking away again.

Amy grabs her jacket from the back of her chair before speed walking out of the third floor bullpen and into the elevator.

* * *

Jake slowly peers his head from around the door to be met with Charles and Gina standing in shock in the kitchen. He glares over at them, his eyes narrow due to the light from the living room. "What the hell are you guys doing in here? And in the kitchen?" He asks, his voice hoarse from not being used in probably over twelve hours.

"Charles used his spare key to get in here." Gina slowly responds, making Charles shut his eyes tightly immediately after.

Jake's glare moves from them both to just on his best friend. "We didn't give you a spare key." He says blatantly.

Charles doesn't respond, which makes Jake change the subject to the first one again.

"What are you guys doing here though?"

Charles moves toward the counter and grabs the plastic box from the side. "I brought you a Boyle family applesauce recipe that helps with stomach flu. Nikolaj and I also made this homemade bread. Half of it is missing because it's been used for his sack lunches, but he's said it's okay for you to try some."

Jake smiles weakly, but shakes his head. "Thanks, but I'm okay," he sighs sleepily before bringing back the conversation to the large noise that had woken him up in the first place, "what was that crash from out here?"

Charles immediately focuses to Gina, lightly raising his finger from under the box to point at her like a toddler would when trying to get a sibling in trouble. "She dropped a pan."

"It wasn't my fault because I had Charles standing behind me criticizing my cleaning technique." Gina glares daggers at the shorter man, sneering at him after she throws him under the bus.

Before the two ex-siblings can begin an argument, giving Jake a more intense headache than the one he had woken up with, he eyeballs them both. "But why are you both here?"

"Charles asked me to help you feel better," Gina responds, "unfortunately the aforementioned short one stayed."

Charles pulls a face toward her, making her sneer at him again.

Jake puts his hand out, shushing them quiet (albeit not as well as Amy would be able too). "Alright, you can both go," he tells them, making them both raise their eyebrows at him, "the only thing that will maybe make me feel any better is sleep, and I can't do that if I know you two are out here bickering with each other." He sighs before re-entering the bedroom and slamming the door quietly behind himself.

A moment passes and Charles glares to Gina. "That was your fault, you were the one who woke him up."

"And you were the one who decided to let me here in the first place. Linetti slapback." She returns, gently slapping the side of his cheek with the tips of her fingers.

* * *

The creaking sound of the evidence locker gate opening by the door makes Amy whip her head to see who it was.

"How did you know anyone was in here?" She asks, refusing to make eye contact with her boss and looking back to glare intently at the brick wall in front of her.

"Oh, I suppose you could say the light was on and I was interested." Holt vaguely replies.

He slowly approaches, noticing the tenseness in her shoulders. She doesn't allow him to get too close before she's turning around to make him stop.

"Is something bothering you, Santiago?" He asks.

She slowly shakes her head, resisting the urge to look back to the wall. "No, sir." She whispers.

"Your shoulders are telling me a different story, sergeant. Care to share with me what is really going on?" He puts his hand out awaiting her answer.

After a moment of silence she almost replies, but then backs out at the last minute.

"If you don't want to, I am not forcing you to tell me." Holt breaks in once noticing that she was struggling.

"No, no, I want to tell you, just give me a minute." Amy sighs.

Holt nods, placing his hands together in front of him whilst he waited.

Before she can actually form any words to explain why she in the evidence room intently staring at the brick wall, the default tune comes from her phone, which was resting on top of some of the nearby boxes. She quickly switches it off and as she turns back the other way, she sees Holt's confused look.

"What was that?" He brings it up after Amy tries subtly to drop it.

Amy takes a moment or two before she manages to respond. "A timer." She replies.

"For what?" Holt questioned.

This response takes a little longer, and is much more quietly spoken. "A pregnancy test."

Holt's eyes widen and his jaw becomes agape. "Oh," he responds, shocked and startled coming across in one, single, solitary word.

* * *

Rather than being woken up by a large clash again, Jake is instead woken up by the smell or either cooking or burning toast from the kitchen. He sits up with a grunt and makes his way out of bed and out to the living room to see in fact that it was the burning toast option.

The almost black in colour smoke was rising above the toaster, filling the kitchen and setting off the smoke alarm above the kitchen counter. Charles pops the toast up to stop the actual burning from increasing while Gina was rushing around trying to find something to stop the smoke detector.

Jake, as quickly as his sleep deprived state would allow, rushes over and grabs a towel from by the sink, waving it by the toaster and then up at the detector. Gina opens the kitchen window, which was luckily right by the toaster, to let most of the smoke out to the street.

Once the most of it had passed, Jake turns and glares at his friend. "What the hell?" He asks, it coming across much more angry than he had hoped.

"Sorry, Jake-y. I didn't mean for that to happen, I literally just put it in a few seconds ago."

Jake weakly smiles to him and laughs a little. "It's fine, this damn things busted anyway. It either doesn't cook enough or burns it in a span of ten seconds." He sighs, hitting the side of the metal box.

"I think you might need a new toaster." Gina speaks up from the back of the kitchen.

Jake turns around and raises his eyebrows. "Oh, really?" He sarcastically replies, gaining a sneered look from Gina as a response.

* * *

"A pregnancy test?" Holt asks, his voice higher than his usual monotone voice.

Amy slowly nods. "I noticed I was late a couple of days ago, but I was so caught up in Jake that I completely forgot, even though he reminded me hundreds of times."

"And the timer was for?" It was clear that Holt was not an expert with something like this.

"To say when the three minutes was up, telling me that the test would be most accurate with it's answer."

Holt nods, slowly beginning to understand. "So what does the test say?"

Amy shrugs her shoulders. "I don't know, I haven't looked."

"Then why don't you look?"

Amy nods and turns toward the test that was lying on top of the boxes right behind her. Before she was able to see the result, she turns away in a panic. "I can't. I'm nervous but yet slightly excited, but then the nervousness over takes that completely."

Holt takes a hesitant step forward toward the sergeant. "It's okay, I understand you may be feeling a little anxious, this is a life changing deal."

"Exactly!" Amy smiles a little while agreeing with her captain. "This is huge... whatever this test says impacts the rest of mine and Jake's life forever."

"A very big deal, Santiago." He nods.

By the look on Amy's now panicking expression, he quickly realizes that wasn't the way he should have taken to helping her through this.

"Oh, god, what if Jake flips? What if this is too soon? We've only been married two years, he's gonna freak when he learns this."

"No, no, Peralta will be pleased with the news, Santiago." He immediately tries to bring back what he had said before, but it was too late. Amy had already dug herself too deep and was quickly becoming an emotional wreck.

"How are you sure he'll be happy? You know about the situation with his own dad. This is just gonna tip him off. He's gonna flip."

Holt stops her mid-spiral. "Santiago! Why are you panicking? You don't even know the result of the test."

Amy nods, wiping her eyes from tears as a result of her freak-out. She turns around and immediately picks up the test, now knowing there wasn't a chance to back down now from seeing the results as her eyes fall upon the two pink lines on the screen.

"It's positive." She whispers quietly to herself, a smile appearing on her face.

"It's what?" Holt wonders.

Amy turns around, the test still clutched in her hand. "It's positive. I'm pregnant."

* * *

Jake puts his plate down on the coffee table with a small smile. "I have to admit Charles, that was actually really nice." He compliments.

"What can I say? Boyle recipes are the cure for everything." The shorter detective laughs as he grabbed the -almost- empty plate from the table.

"How are you feeling now?" Gina asks, putting her plate down too, leaving most of the food on there.

Jake nods. "Surprisingly the best I've felt since I fell ill."

Charles smiles happily from the kitchen with pride. As he goes back over to the living room to grab Gina's plate, he looks to his ex-sibling and glares at her with a beaming smile. "Gina, be sure to let Milton know that my recipe works, will you?"

Gina rolls her eyes at him. "God, you're such a brat, you know that."

Jake lifts his head in. "Hey, brat!" He shouts out loudly, making Charles and Gina look to him with eyebrows raised. "This is the BRAT diet. Brat? BRAT?"

Gina tilts her head in confusion while Charles walks back to the kitchen laughing. "I get it." He giggles.

"Thank you Boyle." Jake smiles, pointing over to his friend stood in the kitchen.

* * *

Immediately after their apartment is closed off from the hallway and possibly spying neighbours, she makes a beeline to the bathroom. As she passes through the bedroom, she grabs one of her many blankets from the bed and wraps it over one of her forearms as she stops and stares at the back of her ailing husband, who was sitting to one side, his head rested against the seat of the toilet. She smiles before kneeling down, placing the blanket over his shoulders.

"Hey, babe, I'm back," she whispers, trying not to wake him, which she knew he would be any minute now anyway.

She kisses his cheek gently, unable to move around him much, as she runs her finger through his hair.

"Look, I know you're gonna be up in like ten minutes and that I can really wait but I can easily tell you again when you're actually alert of what I'm saying," she smiles, "do you remember that test you were asking me to take with great demand?" She asks, "well, I took it, and I passed."

When her husband didn't respond, she doesn't continue, knowing to tell him again when he woke up. She kisses his cheek again before standing up.

As she quietly leaves the bathroom, she smiles back at him and whispers, "I'll see you in a little bit." She says before leaving the bathroom, shutting the door an inch on her way out.

_***Five Minutes Later*** _

Jake slowly emerges from the bathroom to find Amy sitting in bed, doing her crossword as usual. Before he can move an inch, Amy turns and smiles at him. "No food for you for the next twenty-four hours, sicko." She laughs.

Jake sighs, deciding not to fight against her. "Fine." He whispers as he shuffled across to his side of the bed where he proceeds to almost collapse.

Amy puts the crossword down and runs her fingers through his hair. "Hey, so you know that test you've been asking me to take?"

Jake doesn't open his eyes and simply hums as a response.

"Well, Holt was talking to me this morning and I actually remembered to take it."

This was when Jake looked up to her with an intrigued raise in his eyebrows. He slowly sits up to look to his wife properly. "And?"

Amy leans over to the other side and goes through her drawer before placing the result in his hand. He stares down at it for a moment with his eyes wide.

Eventually he asks, "are you kidding?"

Amy slowly nods, smiling widely. "No. That's the test I took this morning."

He quickly looks back to the test and then back up at Amy. "We're having a baby?"

"We're having a baby!" Amy repeats.

Jake pulls her into a tight hug, kissing her temple and forehead several times over and over again. "I'd kiss you properly but my breath's awful."

Amy pulls away and glares at him. "You were gonna sleep without having brushed your teeth?"

"I'm kidding." He smiles before quickly kissing her lips.

Amy pulls away and laughs. "You'd better be." She says before pulling her husband in for another kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How's that?? A Peraltiago baby!


	3. Episode 3 - Diagnosis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick update, seen as I had written most of this chapter before even beginning to write the first one, and I was off school due to an injury in netball on Wednesday (oh the joys of P.E am I right?)
> 
> WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE!!! (and also a crap bunch of angst)
> 
> I KNOW ANGST CAN BE A DIFFICULT GENRE FOR SOME PEOPLE, BUT IF YOU ARE INTRESTED IN READING THE ENTIRE STORY, THIS CHAPTER IS MAJOR IN THE DEVELOPMENT! PLEASE DON'T MISS THIS CHAPTER!

_**Synopsis:** The squad learns some devastating news after an incident at the precinct cause Jake to end up in the hospital._  
_**Genre:** Angst_

* * *

"It's great to have you back, Peralta," Holt speaks with a small smile as he approaches the desk that had been empty for a week while it's occupier had been home sick, "the bullpen has missed your mischief."

"Even you?" Jake asks with a goofy grin, tilting his head slightly to his right side.

Holt looks up and glances around the bullpen before meeting they eyes of the detective once again. "I suppose you could say I have ... missed your presence in the precinct."

Jake awes. "Captain, you shouldn't have."

Holt gives another small and brief smile before returning back to his desk.

Amy looks to Jake. "Okay, if you need me, I'm just downstairs."

Jake nods and Amy goes back toward the elevator. He stops her in her tracks, making her walk back over to his desk. "I won't be needing you help though because I feel fine."

Amy rolls her eyes. "Can I go downstairs this time?" She asks.

"Yep." He responds.

Amy turns back around and heads over to the elevator.

"I love you!" Jake yells across the bullpen as she enters the elevator.

"Love you, too." She says back just before the big metal door close.

Jake looks around his desk for a moment before turning his chair around to face Terry. "Hey, Sarge, you got any cases for me to jump into."

Terry looks to face the detective. "No, sorry, Jake. The cases all got assigned on Monday, we haven't had any new ones come in yet," he answers, and by the look on the detectives face, it wasn't the answer he was looking for. Terry then adds, "but you can continue your case with Diaz on the Arellano murder before Major Crimes can step in."

Jake looks over to Rosa. "You haven't solved that yet?" His voice comes across more shocked than he had previously wished.

She glares up at him. "Well, I apologize, but my partner was off sick for a week because he ate crappy food which resulted in him getting food poisoning."

"Hurtful," Jake responds, "and it was stomach flu."

"Same thing." She mumbles.

Jake was going to add the correction about them not being any where near each other, but Terry told him to drop it.

"She's a little stressed, I wouldn't push the buttons."

Jake raises his eyebrows. "Why's she stressed?"

"Because she's planning a wedding right now. Didn't Amy go like that?"

"Yeah. But I wouldn't say she was so _Type A_ about it than I thought she would in the first place."

Terry nods along. "Well, just stay low with her. Trust me, it's for your own good."

* * *

"Hey, Jake?" The voice made Jake turn around from talking with Rosa about the case to see Scully walking out of the break room.

"What's up, Scully?"

"Do you know who's sandwich was sitting in the fridge in the break room?"

Jake nods. "Ur, yeah, it was mine, but you can have it if you want."

Scully thanks him and leaves, going back into the break room.

Once Jake turns back, he sees Rosa's questioning glance. "Didn't Amy tell you to eat that?" She asks.

Jake nods again, now fiddling with his rubber band ball that had been sitting there idol for a week. "Yeah, but I'm not hungry."

"Are you sure? No offense, but you look five pounds lighter than you did a week ago." Rosa sighs.

"Why would that be offensive?" He questions, pinging one of the bands.

"It wasn't planning to be." Rosa responds, making Jake look up with his eyebrows raised. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yes, why is everyone asking me that?"

"And by everyone, do you mean Boyle?"

Jake looks to the side slightly, remembering back to every time someone asked if he was feeling okay. Given that he majority was Boyle, he slowly nod as his response.

"That's what I thought." Rosa says as she stands from the chair next to Jake's desk and goes back to her own desk across the bullpen.

* * *

It was now an hour after lunch, and given the fact Jake avoided eating to stop himself throwing up again, he can feel his stomach go at any different smell that would arise from the kitchen or any individual desk, especially Hitchcock and Scully's.

Jake lifts his gaze up, looking toward the corridor that lead to the men's bathroom. He knows there and then that he will throw up before the ending day, and that he won't be able to avoid it.

He feels the sweat on his forehead begin to form and run down the side of his face as he hears the - slight - colour in his skin drain away.

Before he can move anywhere or do anything, Charles catches on to his friend's sudden odd behaviour. "Jake-y, you okay?" He asks again for what must have been the hundredth time that day.

Jake looks to his friend, and then out to the bullpen; then to his friend, and again out to the bullpen. The third time around, he stops when eyes glance over to Charles. "Ur, yeah, no, maybe?" He says quickly.

"What's wrong?" Charles questions, now completely petrified for his best friend. "Are you feeling ill again?"

Jake fumbles to reply before giving in. "Yeah." He sighs.

At this point, the entire bullpen had gone quiet as everyone was trying to listen to the conversation.

Terry pokes in. "Jake, how badly do you feel sick?"

Jake shrugs his shoulders. "Just nauseous."

"Do you want us to do anything for you?" Charles wonders.

Jake then shakes his head, beginning to stand from his desk. "No, I'm-I'm just gonna go and tell Amy about it.

He goes toward the elevator but before pressing the button to call it up from the second floor, he shakes his head to himself and goes over to the stairs instead. Two steps down the case, and everything goes to black.

* * *

"This is the second instance of uniformed officers causing a disturbance in the bullpen, and I must say, it is beginning to look -" Amy's cut off from scolding three of the uniformed officers for causing a riot in the bullpen the day before by a loud crash coming from outside the briefing room.

She races out, reading to warn the officers of the consequences over fighting for minor reasons (the other day it was over a binder clip) and instead of finding two or more officers yelling at each other or threatening each other with chairs or pens like usual, she finds several officers standing in shock by their desks and two officers by the stairs.

"What's going on out here?" She asks the entire bullpen.

One of the officers by the stairs calls over the commotion. "It's Detective Peralta, Sarge. He just fell down the stairs."

Amy rushes over and kneels down next to her husband's head, raising it to her lap. She then whispers his name down to him and gently taps at his cheeks to try and regain his consciousness.

Then at the sound of feet jumping down the stairs, she looks up to se Rosa and Terry running down toward them. They stop at a halt and Amy glares up at them. "What the hell happened up there?" She asks, raising her voice but not yelling at them.

"He was coming down to tell you he didn't feel right again, and he just collapsed on like the third step down." Terry responded.

Amy had continued to tap at her husband's face with not avail. "He's not waking up." She sighs, looking up to the other sergeant and detective in worry.

Terry bends down and picks the almost lifeless body up from the floor and goes toward the break room on the same floor. He lays Jake down on the couch gently before trying himself to get the detective to come back around.

After a minute, he stands back up and sighs. "That's no use."

"What do we do?" Rosa asks, folding her arms over her chest.

Amy stops her slight pacing. "We've got to get him to come back, then we'll know he's okay."

"Amy, call an ambulance," Terry instructs her, "this could be serious, there's no harm in checking."

Amy nods and grabs her phone from her pocket, immediately doing what the sergeant had told her to do. She walks out the break room, but stays within eye line in case Terry and Rosa were successful in their efforts to get Jake back to consciousness.

A moment later, Charles rushes toward her. "Where's Jake?"

Amy points in the break room. "He's in there."

"Is he okay?" Charles wonders.

Amy sighs. "he's unconscious, but I know Terry and Rosa will try their best, and I'm on hold with 911 to get an ambulance for him."

Charles slumps in one of the chairs. "I hope he's gonna be okay, I can't imagine my life without him. What if something bad happens?"

Amy kneels down in front of the spiralling detective. "I promise, Charles, you will be one of the first people to know if anything happens. But right now, can you please contact Jake's parents because they really need to know what going on and I know you have their numbers."

Charles looks up with a dropped face. "Okay," he mumbles as he stands and walks back toward the stairs to get his phone from his desk.

She's picked up on the other line by a dispatcher and Amy begins to explain what had been going on. Before the dispatcher says they had put an ambulance on route, Rosa bursts out from the break room.

"He's just thrown up blood." She says quickly before Amy can ask how it was going.

"What?" Amy asks.

"We got him back round and he said he was gonna throw up. When he did, it was filled with blood." Rosa adds with detail for Amy to understand a little more.

Amy followed Rosa back in to see Terry kneeling by Jake's head, holding a paper bag by his mouth. "Jake," she whispers as she next to Terry. She uses her free hand and grabs his own, using the pad of her thumb to rub up and down as a comfort.

"Ames, my stomach hurts." Jake whimpers.

"I bet it does." She replies with a small smile.

"Am I gonna die?" He asks, looking sadly in his wife's eyes.

"What?" Amy's caught off guard a little before she curls the edges of her lips into a serious smile. "No. Not yet anyway. Not on my watch. You're gonna be just fine, I promise."

* * *

The squad had been anxiously waiting to hear about what was exactly going on with their friend. It had been an hour now, and they were all getting very worried about what the result would be.

"The longer they make us wait, the more I'm gonna panic!" Charles shouts (he doesn't yell for the respect of the other patients) to Rosa when she tells him to calm down.

"Boyle, the more you panic, the more of a chance I'm gonna punch you, so stop!" Rosa does yell.

"I'm sorry, but I can't stop thinking about Jake. I'm so worried for him." He sighs.

Rosa stands from her seat and moves to sit next to the worrying detective. "You wanna know something?" She wonders in a calming voice.

"What's that?" Charles asks.

"I'm worried about Jake too," she says, facing the detective with a weak smile, "so how we be worried about Jake together?"

Charles smiles. "Yeah, that sounds nice."

* * *

"So, I'm Doctor Hamills and I will be making sure everything is okay with you today." The older-age man introduced himself. He was at least in his middle age, with the grey beginning to form by his ears; he wore huge glasses that half-covered his thick, grey eyebrows; and he was carrying a huge clipboard under his arm.

"Oh, thank god, we've been waiting an hour for someone to see us." Jake throws his head to the pillow.

Amy puts her hand in his and hits I to the bed a couple of times. "Manners, Jake."

"Anyway, can you please explain the symptoms you've been feeling?" Doctor Hamills asks, looking at the clipboard and refusing to make eye contact.

Jake sighs and looks up as he replies, "feeling sick and being sick, which started out kinda normal but it changed earlier on today with blood mixed in; I'm unable to keep food down, no matter how long I don't eat for beforehand; loads of stomach pains and aches, which varies on the pain scale; and a loss of appetite."

"Have you lost any weight recently, without trying to?"

Jake thinks back for his answer before he tilts his head from side to side. "I guess, mainly cause I can't keep any food down."

Doctor Hamills writes everything Jake had just told him down.

Amy breaks the silence. "Do you know what's going on? Like why he's not been able to get better."

"We won't know until we do some tests. I'm going to start you off with CT scan to your abdomen and we'll see where that takes us." The doctor says before he leaves.

Jake turns to Amy. "What's a CT scan?" He asks.

Amy lightly shrugs. She pulls her phone from her bag. "I'll look it up." She says before she goes quiet again whilst scrolling through her phone. After a minute she stops and speaks, which Jake can assume she's reading word-to-word from the screen. "It says here that CT scans produce detailed images of many structure inside the body, including the internal organs, blood vessels and bones."

"So they're basically gonna get great pictures of the inside of me?" Jake asks, making Amy nod whilst still looking at her phone. "Cool." He adds with a smile.

"It also says that CT scans can be used to detect any damage to bones, injuries to internal organs, problems with blood flow, stroke and -" she feels her hart drop, which stops her from finishing the passage.

Jake, who was still a little caught up of having a photo taken of the inside of his body, turns to his wife again. "And what?" He asks.

Amy can't form the ending word on her tongue. Instead, she places her phone back on the chair and jumps up. "I'll be right back." She announces as she leaves the room.

"And what?!" She hears Jake shout after her.

Amy roams the halls for a moment before she catches up with Doctor Hamills. She grabs his attention and pulls him away to the side, away from the main and public reception.

"Cancer?!" Amy asks, the finishing word to the sentence now able to roll off her tongue.

"Excuse me?" He asks, raising his eyebrows slightly.

"Jake has cancer, doesn't he?"

* * *

Gina and Karen both rush into the ER, frantically looking around for somebody they knew, or were positive Jake knew. They turned a corner to the reception desk and Gina immediately began yelling at the receptionist.

"Where the hell is Jake Peralta?" She questions.

"Excuse me, ma'am, this is the emergency room, not a playground. Be considerate for the people here." The receptionist scowls her.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Gina breaks in sarcastically, "but I don't give a hoot, that guy is my oldest and best friend, so you're gonna give the info up now!"

"He's in a CT scan. If you're a friend of his, please follow through there," she turns to Karen, "and who are you."

"I'm his mother." Karen replies quietly.

The receptionist points over to the waiting room sign. "Go in there and wait like the rest of them."

They both follow the receptionists angry point and go through to the waiting room. There they find the entire of the Nine-Nine, with the exceptions of Hitchcock and Scully. The squad was split up around the room: Terry sitting in one corner, his leg quickly bouncing up and down in worry; Rosa and Charles sitting in another, talking quietly amongst themselves; Holt was standing in a third corner, talking on the phone to who Gina could assume was Kevin; and Amy was pacing up and down the row of chairs.

The female sergeant catches glimpses of her husband's friend and mother before quickly going over. She greets them with a small, forced smile.

Karen hugs her daughter-in-law. "How are you doing, sweetie?" She asks.

"I'm doing okay, although I'm terrified for Jake." Amy sighs.

"Me too." Karen gently smiles.

Gina goes across and sits next to Terry. "What's up Terr-bear?" She asks.

Terry looks to the civilian with a raised eyebrow. He takes a minute before responding, as not to say the wrong thing. "I'm just nervous. Terry gets jittery when he's nervous."

"He's gonna be fine, he's Jake Peralta. The kid's been through a lot since he was an actual kid but he's the toughest person I know."

"You really think he's gonna be okay?" Terry wonders.

"Of course, I'm certain about it."

* * *

"Jacob Peralta?" A nurse calls to the waiting room, making the entire group of people gathered around stand to their feet and jump over if needs be. The nurse awes. "That's so sweet that you're all here, but I was hoping to speak to close family to the patient."

Amy and Karen walk forward.

"You guys are?" The nurse asks.

"Oh, I'm his wife and this is his mother." Amy responds

The nurse smiles and asks them to follow her, before turning back to the squad and explaining they would know next. She takes them back through to Jake's room, where he was sat upright in bed again.

As his wife and mother enter the room, he calls out and smiles widely at them. Karen goes over to hug her son while Amy asks how the procedure went.

After Jake goes into detail about how the dye felt and all the machinery that was in the room, and how it felt really supernatural, the nurse buts in slightly.

"The results will be with you shortly." She says before she leaves, shutting the door behind her.

Amy turns back to Jake. "Well, that sounds... fun?"

Jake smiles and nods. "Funnily enough, it was quite fun."

"How do you feel, honey?" Karen asks.

"I'm fine, I mean my head hurts slightly, but the doctor said it would because of the iodine thing-y they used." Jake replies.

Karen leans forward and kisses her son's forehead. "Well, that's good."

* * *

Half an hour later, the door opens up again, Doctor Hamills entering the room with a small and weak smile whilst clutching a sheet of something resembling paper.

"So, Mister Peralta, we have your results for your CT scan, are you ready?" Doctor Hamills asks.

Jake grabs to Amy's hand and squeezes tightly, making her rub the pad of her thumb up and down his hand.

Hamills holds the scan up, pointing out everything visible in the picture. "And this is the stomach, which is where you have complained about and have said there has been the most amount of pain. The scan does confirm stage two-b stomach cancer, which is categorized under T4a, meaning the tumour has grown through all of the layers into the connective tissue outside the stomach and into the peritoneal lining, but it has not spread to any lymph nodes or surrounding organs, which is a good sign."

Jake widens his eyes and before the doctor can speak again, he buts in. "I'm sorry, but on what planet is that any sort of good sign? It's fucking awful, you can't say anything like that. You don't have any jurisdiction to say anything remotely close to it!"

"Jake, calm down and listen, this will be helpful." Karen whispers to her son.

"I understand you concern, sir, but it would be much more tricky if it had moved to another vital organ." Doctor Hamills responds.

"Oh, right so treating this will be a piece of cake will it?" Jake asks, beginning to raise his voice.

"I am not saying that."

"So what's with all the good sign and other organ shit? Why bother with it if it's not relevant?"

"You know what, I'm gonna give you guys some space." Doctor Hamills announces before leaving the room once again.

"Yeah, leave! Come back when you can properly explain yourself!" Jake yells after the doctor as the door closes.

"Jake!" Amy scowls him.

"What?" He shrugs his shoulder. "Why is he bothering with all of this random crap he knows I won't understand and tell us what's really happening. Lymph nodes my ass, what even are lymph nodes anyway? I've never heard of them. It's the shit he's made up to mess with us. I want the real answers!"

"He is giving us the real answers, Jake. That's what it is. That's why you've been sick. It's cancer. Nothing else." Amy tells him.

For a moment it seems as if it sunk in for Jake then, but when he starts yelling out again that it couldn't have been, Amy stands up and excuses herself, leaving Jake in the care of his mother.

She goes out to the waiting room again, where everyone is sitting together. When she walks through, everyone stands up.

"Why are you out here? What's going on?" Charles asks, his voice slightly high pitched.

"Jake got really defensive about the results and keeps denying it, so I'm just taking a breather." Amy sighs.

Terry looks down to the sergeant. "So, what are the results?" He wonders.

"He has stage two stomach cancer."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, like I said in chapter 1, this story has a happy ending, it's just a long road to get there.


	4. Episode 4 - The Announcment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this is one of the longest chapters I've ever written, being 6.1k words (just behind the story I posted on Christmas day which was 6.5k words). 
> 
> Oh, for you dianetti fans, there's a scene in this chapter with Rosa and Gina - just to brand out to you guys too!

_**Synopsis:** The squad has to come to terms with Jake's recent cancer diagnosis, Jake himself included. The squad all learn of some more surprising news.  
_ _**Genre:** Mostly Angst, a little Comedy_

* * *

"He's got what?" Charles asks, eyes wide open at the female sergeant.

"Stage two stomach cancer." Amy repeats, this time much slower than the last.

Charles quickly falls back down to the chair as his legs give in and Terry immediately pushes forward, wrapping his arms across Amy, hugging her tightly. "Amy, I'm so sorry, this is awful." His voice breaks as his eyes begin to tear up.

Amy slowly hugs him back. "I'm fine. It's Jake I'm worried about." She whispers. She pulls away from the giant sergeant. "He's in complete denial."

"Denial how? In what way?" Rosa wonders.

"He just keeps going on and on about how it isn't happening, and how -" she stops for a moment to hitch back the cry that was in the back of throat "- how the results aren't right."

"Is there anything we can do, Santiago?" Holt questions, taking a step forward.

Amy shakes her head slowly. "No, sir. But you should all go home, you've been here too long." She insists.

Gina steps forward, placing her hand against Amy's shoulder. "Don't be stupid, Jake's like family to all of us, we're not leaving him, or you for that matter. We're all in this together." She says with a small, genuine smile.

It was true. They were a family. Jake had accounted several times that he felt like Gina was more like a sister than a friend, he had called Holt "dad" numerous times in the past before attempting to cover it up after and one Thanksgiving he declared the squad was like a family. An odd one, but still a family.

"What can we do for you, Amy?" Gina asks.

Amy looks at the civillian for second with doubt filling her mind. After a moment, she softens her lips to a subtle smile. "Can you help Jake understand this? I know I won't be able to and you've known him the longest."

Gina thinks for a moment before slowly nodding. "Of course."

* * *

Amy and Gina walk hesitately into the hospital room that Jake had been in for hours now. He was still rambling, but at this point, it was to himself.

Amy steps in front of the civillian. "Jake, where's your mother?"

He shrugs his shoulders. "How should I know? She just got up and left." He replies.

Gina goes next. "How are you feeling, buddy?" She asks, taking one of the chair that was left vacant by the bed.

Jake glares at her with a slightly creepy smile. "Oh, I'm great, I'm just wondering where the camera is, because this must be some sort of prank show. The doctor will come back in any minute and show me my real scan and say everything's fine, that I'm just having this weird and rare allergic reaction to something that has never happened before in history."

Gina sighs and looks at Amy, who gives her a small knowing smile for her current position. She then puts her attention back on Jake, who was looking around the room with quick glances on everything. She puts her hands on top of his and calls his name. "Jake, girl, this isn't a prank show. This isn't a joke, or a lie, or whatever else your crazy brain comes up with. This is real, Jake-y, I'm sorry, but it's real."

Jake glares at her with his eyebrows furrowed for a moment before they loosen, a huge smile appearing on his face. "No, that's not true." He denies.

"Jake!" Amy yells his name, grabbing his attention quickly as she angrily sits in the other vacant chair. "Snap out of it! Snap out of whatever trance you fallen into! Gina's right, this is the reality now, it's not some joke. This is it now, Jake. It's cancer, the doctor has confirmed it. You will have to come down here again and again for chemotheraphy and you'll have all the side effects, and you're gonna have to live with it, whether you choose to accept it or not. You have cancer, Jake, nothing else, just cancer. Stop denying it!"

This time Jake's face falls, and doesn't light up with a ridicoulous premise. He stays quiet for a moment as the two women hope that it has finally settled in for him. The slow and solitary "oh," that falls from his lips a minute ot two later makes them sit back in their chairs with a subtle triumphant look on their faces.

"I ... I have - cancer?" Jake asks hoarsely, looking sadly at his wife.

She sits forward and grasps his hand in hers, interwining their fingers. As she gives out a slight smile, she feels her eyes burn up with tears. "I'm so sorry, Jake, I wish you didn't but ... but you do."

After a moment of silence that felt as if it pierced right through them all, Gina speaks up quietly. "You're gonna be okay, girl. Trust me."

Jake looks to her and notices her eyes well up the same way they did when she found out that Nana had passed. He smiles to her weakly. "You really think so?" He asks.

She nods slowly. "I'm sure." She states before pulling her friend in for a hug. There, the tears fell down her cheek. As one landed on Jake's shoulder, she's pushed away from the brother she never really had.

Jake looks her in the eye, smiling a little more than before, until he can't see anymore due to his blurry vision impacted by his own eyes welling up. "No, you're allowed to well up, but crying isn't allowed." He tells her. He then blinks and the tears run down his face.

"You hypocrite." Gina lets out a single laugh.

"I'm allowed to though, there's exceptions." Jake says, weakly smiling at his friend.

* * *

"Mister Peralta," a nurse greets him as they open the door ajar to peek their head through, "there's a group of people waiting to see you."

Jake nods, the smile still present from the last story Gina told. "Invite them in."

The nurse smiles and nods before leaving and letting the door fall behind them. It was a minute later when it burst open again with the squad bumbling through, reminding Jake very much a pack of bulls racing after their prey.

Charles spares no time and rushes over, swinging his entire body across Jake's as he audibly wept into his partner's shoulder. Jake slowly hugs him back, much due to the fact he could hardly move under his friend's tight grip.

As the squad fills the room, Amy is quick to notice Karen was not a part of the group. Her curiosity as to where her mother-in-law had gone getting the better of her, she manages to sneak behind the crowd and out the door to the hospital corridor.

Terry looks to Jake, him trying not to cry by using the same technique as when he saw Rosa in prison. "How are you doing?"

"What are you doing with your face?" Jake wonders, furrowing his brows in slight confusion.

Rosa glances over and sighs, answering for the sergeant. "The same stupid thing he did when I was in prison. It's his _crying face_."

"Well, I'm not sure that I like it very much." The detective says, scrunching his nose up slightly in disgust.

"You ignored his question to focus on his slight horrifying facial effect. How are you doing, Peralta?" Holt chimes in.

Jake then slowly nods. "I'm okay, I guess."

"Are you still in denial?" Rosa asks.

Jake looks to his partner with a slightly confused face before glancing Gina's stare on the side of his face in the corner of his eye. He looks back to Rosa. "No, I've come to terms with it, Amy helped make me realise," he looks to the chair that his wife was sat at two minutes ago to find it empty, "where's Amy?"

* * *

After a minute or so looking around the corridors, Amy eventually turns a corner to find Karen mindlessly staring out one of the large windows. She slowly approaches her mother-in-law as not to scare her too much as it seemed she was completely out of it.

Amy goes around to face her, to see the tears streaming down her face. "Karen, are you okay?" She asks quietly but just loud enough to break her out of the trance.  
Karen spots her daughter-in-law and nods, wiping her face. "Yes, of course."

"You don't need to seem strong, that's not what Jake would need." Amy sighs.

"But it is, Amy. He's not this person you can show your weaknesses to, trust me. It gets in his head. Seeing me or anyone like this would freak him out." Karen sighs.

"Well you don't have to be strong in front of me. I'm probably in the same state of mind as you."

Karen takes a deep breath to compose herself before looking at her properly. "I can't stop thinking about him as a kid. He was a happy, albeit slightly hyperactive, little boy and now look at him. He can barely sit up straight without feeling nauseous."

"He's gonna be okay, Karen, I promise. I told him he has to be." Amy says, adding a little smile at the end.

"But how do we know he can keep up to that promise? Tomorrow's a mystery, it's always been, but how do we know he gets a tomorrow?"

"Karen, I know I shouldn't say anything because it could jinx everything, but I'm sure Jake will be fine with it if I explain why I did, and you are in clear desperate need." Amy begins before looking around the corridor in case anyone from the squad was nearby to overhear.

"What's going on?" Karen wonders, looking concerned at her son's wife.

Whispering, Amy responds. "I know he'll try his hardest because I'm... pregnant."

Karen takes a step back, a grin appearing on her face. "Really?"

Amy nods, smiling at her reaction. "Yes, and you-" she stops as someone walks by "-you have to be discrete because nobody knows... well, apart from Holt, but that was because he was in the room when I found out."

Karen hugs her daughter-in-law. "Amy, that's amazing, that really is," she says before taking a step back, "I'm gonna be a grandma... I'm gonna be a grandma." She repeats getting slightly louder as she says it a second time.

"What happened to discrete?" Amy asks as she turns away from the looks some of the people walking through the corridor at the time were giving to them.

Karen nods. "Right, sorry, I just got excited."

* * *

Jake begins to sit up in bed to attempt to slowly go off to the bathroom in the now empty room. Just as he's swinging his legs out from under the warm but scratchy hospital bedsheet, the door swings open. Karen immediately goes over to her son and hugs him from the side.

Jake then makes eye contact with his wife. "Ames, where did you go? Everyone's gone to look for you, you just vanished."

Amy smiles at her mother-in-law and husband before shutting the door to the frame, but not shutting it properly, allowing it to fall open a little more. "I was on look for your mother. And in an attempt to cheer her up slightly, I may have told her about the baby."

Jake becomes wide-eyed. "Is that why she's hugging me like a crazy person?"

Before Amy can respond, Jake jumps and lets out a sudden squeal as his mother gently hits him against the side of his head with her fingers.

"Right, sorry, mom." Jake says gently as his mother loosens her grip and falls to the seat she was at originally.

"I just can't believe I'm gonna be a grandma. I'm so happy for you guys right now." She says with a smile.

"I have asked her to be discrete about it, seen as nobody on the squad knows other than Holt-"

"Wait? Holt knows? Since when?" Jake asks, interrupting his wife.

Amy furrows her eyebrows. "He was in the room when I found out... did I not tell you that?" She wonders.

"No. No you did not." Jake shakes his head.

Amy sits down at the other vacant seat. "Oh, well now you know," she responds before smiling at her husband, "anyway, I've asked her to be discrete, but she doesn't seem to know the understanding of the word."

"No offense, babe, but it does feel good to say to someone else other than you that we're having a baby," Jake beams, turning to the empty room, "I'm gonna be a dad!"

In a dramatic sense, the door slams open, exposing a slightly confused Charles on the other side. "What?!" He basically screams.

Jake hides his head down as Amy lets out a nervous laugh. "That sounds about right." She sighs, looking around the room and at the people inside with great detail.

"Amy, you're pregnant?!" Charles rushes over to her side.

Amy glares a dagger at her husband before realizing that it wasn't his fault that his best friend was eavesdropping on their conversation. Jake had every right to be excited about the upcoming future he would get with the baby.

She looks back up to Charles, at his creepily wide eyes and jaw slightly agape. She turns the edges of her lips to curl upwards and she places her hands in her lap.

She nods slightly at the detective. "Yes, Charles I am." She responds.

His follow-up to this is wheezing heavily, trying to catch his breath back; crying, alarmingly more than he was after Jake's diagnosis; before eventually passing out on the dirty hospital floor.

Karen tries to look over the bed. "Is he okay?"

Jake nods. "Yeah, he's just having a moment. It's a really long story, it would be better if you didn't ask." He replies, stilling hiding his face slightly.

* * *

Terry rushes through the door, pushing it so far open it locks in place. "I'm sorry, Jake, I could find Amy anywhere." He sighs in defeat.

Amy chimes in from the couch, where she was tending to the still passed out Charles. "Don't panic, I only went out to find Karen."

Terry smiles at her before it vanishes upon seeing Charles. "What happened to him?" He points him out.

"Oh," Karen cuts in from Jake and Amy, "he found out about the baby and he passed out."

"Mom!" "Karen!" Jake and Amy both yell out at her simultaneously.

"What? You said he knew." She defends.

Amy sighs. "I said Holt knew." She responds as Jake allows his head to swing down.

"What's going on? Is someone hiding something?" Terry asks, raising his eyebrows.

Jake and Amy both glare up at him with their eyes wide. "What?! No, why would there be anything to hide?" Amy asks, her voice high, making Terry raise his eyebrows more.

Terry shakes his head. "No, you guys have the same look you did when you were trying to hide your relationship. What are you hiding this time? What did Karen mean when she said Charles passed out when he learned of the..." his glare softens and his lips curl to a smile, "you guys are having a baby, aren't you?"

Jake and Amy look to Terry before back at each other with a subtle smile before a voice at the still wide open door makes them all turn to face Rosa.

"Should I just come back?" She asks before seeing their glances. She nods to herself and turns around. "I'll come back in a minute." She responds as she forcefully tugs the door closed behind her.  
After a silent moment, Jake looks up. "How hard is it to close a door now a-days? Rosa did it." He sighs.

* * *

While roaming the halls, Rosa takes the time to contemplate what exactly just happened. She was just going in the room to talk to Jake about not being able to find Amy and suddenly she somehow now knows about a pregnancy she was sure she wasn't supposed to know of yet.

Suddenly she broken out of her trance when she accidentally collides with Gina, who happened to be not watching where she was going as she was watching her phone.

"What was that for?" Gina asks, ready to give the person a piece of her mind before noticing that it was Rosa. "Oh, sorry, that was my bad, I wasn't watching where I was going. I was on a text chain with my manager and their being a big dick about the model app I suggested yesterday."

Rosa shakes her head, blowing it off. "It's fine, I wasn't watching where I was going."

Gina immediately catches on to Rosa's weird twinge in her cheek. "Are you okay?" She asks.

Rosa nods. "Yeah, I'm just out of it, I don't wanna talk about it," she crosses her arms over her chest, "if you really want to know, talk to Jake and Amy."

Gina sighs. "Do you know where Amy is? I know I should be looking, but I got kinda bored and started wandering around. Great tip, it really does help clean your mind, if your tempted to sue your manager."

"The app-designing job not going the way you want to?" Rosa asks.

Gina shakes her head. "Oh... no, it's going awesome, I love it, just my manager's being a dick."

Rosa smiles weakly at her. "Oh, right."

After a minute, Gina looks to the detective. "can I ask you one question without you getting all badass on me?"

Rosa hitches a laugh as she nods subtly. "Sure, what's up?"

"You know how Jake's one of your longest friends?" She wonders.

"Is this your question?" Rosa raises her eyebrows.

"I wasn't finished." Gina sighs. "What I was going to say was: you know Jake's one of your longest friends, and what I was going to ask is how are you doing with the whole cancer thing?"

Rosa's face falls slightly (not enough to be caught on by someone who didn't know the detective, but it was clear to one of her closet friends who had seen her ups and downs). "I'm fine, the guy I consider my best friend has just been diagnosed with stomach cancer at a stage that roughly only 60% of people live from after five-years, but I'm fine."

Gina smiles and pulls the detective in for a hug, very much against her will. But she can't help her curiosity get the better of her. "How do you know about the survival rate?"

"I went to medical school." Rosa sighs.

Gina pushes her away, causing a sigh of relief from Rosa. "Really?!" She asks, her voice higher than usual.

"Yes, and if you tell anyone I will slit your throat. You are one of two people that know. Not even Alicia knows."

Gina takes a moment to think that around before she asks, "who's the other person then if it's not Alicia?"

"Amy." Rosa responds, making Gina raise her eyebrows in interest. "And you've used up your _one_ question."

"I used it up like four questions ago." Gina sighs.

"I gave you lenience, consider yourself lucky." Rosa says before breaking free from Gina's grasp on her arms and walking away.

"That's not fair, Rosa!" Gina yells before chasing after the detective.

* * *

Karen sits down on the vacant chair and faces her son seriously. She had just gotten off the phone and she looked as if it wasn't good news. "Jake, honey," she gains her son's attention from Charles - who was alert now and completely freaking out as Amy attempted to calm him down, "I have some news."

That was it. The same face, Jake knew it and recognised it like the day was yesterday. That was the same face his mother had when she sat him down when he was seven years old to say his father had left and wasn't coming back. "Mom, is everything okay?" He wonders, saying what he did thirty-two years ago.

"It's your father," Karen replies as the room goes quiet as they listened in, "he can't get back to New York to see you."

Jake slightly shrugs his shoulders, appearing to be completely unaffected by it. "Okay, that's fine, he's flying, it's his job and I can't stop him from doing his job... I'll see him in like two weeks, we said we'd meet up once he was back from Toronto anyway."

Karen sighs. "Jake, he's booked up with flights for the next six months. He's flying everywhere, he can't make it back."

"Oh." Jake says simply. He nods slightly as he slowly adds, "well, that's completely fine... it's work so he can't stop, can he? No, that's fine, I don't care." He shakes his head.

Amy leans forward from the couch where she was sat next to Charles. "Jake, are you sure you're okay? I know you were pretty excited to see your dad again." She wonders.

Jake looks over to her and nods his head. "Yeah, of course I'm okay. I don't care that my dad won't be in the States while I start my chemo, but it's not about me, it's his job, he can't just drop that, he - he has to work," he begins to stammer as he continues, "and-and it's not like he... he hasn't missed things of mi-mine before. It-it's kinda normal for me, I-I don't care. I-I can always call him."

"He wants you to know he's wishing you the best and he can't wait to see you again," Karen says, "he just needs you to know it won't be for a while."

Jake nods. "Yeah I get that and that's how I know I don't care, how many times do I have to say it?" He asks.

Just then the door opens ajar, revealing Doctor Hamills. "Is this a bad time?" The doctor asks, peering his head through the door.

Before anyone can answer, Jake nods his head. "No, no, come in." He tells them.

Doctor Hamills enters the room and closes it behind him. Before he can speak, he notices Charles. "Who's this?" He asked.

"My best friend Charles, he's staying in here too, and we're cops so you have to listen to us." Jake begins before Amy shushes him quiet, telling him they can't do anything about it.

Doctor Hamills shakes it off and looks back to Jake. "Now mister Peralta, we have got your discharge papers if you would prefer to leave the hospital, but we will need you back here by midday tomorrow afternoon for your first chemotherapy session."

"Wait? Why's that so soon? I thought it would be later this week."

Doctor Hamills clicks his tongue and looks down to the paper in his hand. "You haven't been told have you?" He asks.

"Told what?" Amy wonders, butting in for Jake, who was going to say the exact same.

"We can't be too certain, but due to the symptoms only appearing in this last week, we have a judgement saying the cancer has only been in place for the past month and a half, and due to the high stage, we have a feeling that the tumor had spread to an almost stage three in such a short amount of time. We'd prefer to be on the safe side and not risk this growing anymore."

Amy butts in again from Jake hesitantly. "By a month and a half ago, when would you say exactly?"

Doctor Hamills shrugs his shoulder. "Five, six weeks ago?" He guesses.

"One more question," Amy begins, leaning forward in her chair slightly, "if the cancer was to form around about the same time of fertilization with a pregnancy, what would be the chance of the embryo being in danger?"

Doctor Hamills glares at Amy. "Are you trying to say something?"

Amy barely shrugs her shoulders as all eyes in the room are on her.

* * *

A nurse walks into the room, exiting from the now busy corridor. She closes the door behind her to give the patients some privacy before making her way to the end of the hospital bed.

She looks to Amy. "Okay, ma'am, the ultrasound technician is ready if you would like to follow me," she says before looking to Jake, "you're welcome to come in too, if you feel up to the trip there."

Jake looks up from his phone and nods. "Yeah, I feel fine." He says as he gets out of the hospital bed.

Luckily Amy was there to catch him from falling when his legs gave in. "Are you sure babe, your mom can keep you company."

Jake nods, regaining his balance. "I'm fine, my legs just went to sleep."

"Jake, honey, don't over do it for yourself, you've been through a lot the past twenty-four hours, you can stay here." Karen says.

"Mom, I said I can make it." Jake attempts not to snap but he can't help raise his voice slightly.

Karen sits back in her chair, resuming reading the book she had brought with her.

Amy turns to the nurse again. "Sorry about him." She sighs.

The nurse blows it off. "It's fine, we see worse here sometimes." She reassures before leading the couple out of the room.

* * *

The ultrasound technician greets Jake and Amy as they walk through the door to his office.

They talk for a moment or two before the technician turns to them both from the file he was given from Doctor Hamills. "Well, I am sorry for everything that had happened in the last day for you two, I'm sure it's been a rollercoaster for you both."

Amy nods as Jake says, "and for families and the squad."

"I'm sure it had been," the doctor says with a sympathetic smile, "now, misses Santiago, are you certain that you are pregnant?"

Amy nods slightly. "I have my appointment next week with my doctor, he was going to confirm it then."

The technician looks back down to the file for a quick glance, flicking through the pages before looking back up at Amy. "Well, how about we do an ultrasound now and make sure, and we can decide where to go from there about your concerns?" He wonders.

Jake and Amy look to each other before they both nod, agreeing to go along with the man's proposal.

* * *

Charles sighs deeply as he was moved to sit in the waiting room again. He had been absent for an hour or two due to passing out and feeling lightheaded for ages, but he was asked to leave the room before the technician was ready with the ultrasound for Amy, and he didn't really want to disobey the hospital staff's rules. The waiting room was almost empty, with the exception of Terry, Holt and Rosa.

Charles goes over at sits sadly on one of the chairs.

"Why are you back here?" Rosa wonders, raising her eyebrows at the other detective.

"They're about to send Amy in for an ultrasound and I wasn't allowed to stay in the room."

"Why are they doing an ultrasound?" Terry wonders.

Charles shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head slowly. "They pinpointed Jake's cancer to a month or so ago and Amy was concerned about the baby."

Rosa sighs and turns away from the conversation. Holt seems to lose interest as his phone pings from his pocket. Terry stands and moves closer to Charles.

"How are you doing? With the whole Jake having cancer thing?" The sergeant asks.

Charles sighs again. He soon finds that he can't form an answer on his tongue, everything he does try to say something, it comes out as nothing.

Terry looks to him as he waits for the response, but it doesn't come. Before too long, Charles is leaning against the sergeant's shoulder, sobbing.

The tall man gently placed his hand on the detective's back. "It's okay, Boyle, you let it out," he reassures, making the detective cry even more, "it's okay."

* * *

Jake was sitting on the rolling chair next to the exam chair Amy was lying on. He had found the chair amusing and had rolled around the room and halfway up the corridor before the technician came in, and his child-like behavior made Amy laugh.

But now he was sitting completely still, holding Amy's hand tightly as they waited for the clear from the doctor.

The technician suddenly moves the machine closer to the exam table and moves to the side.

"You are definitely pregnant," he says with a gentle smile, pointing out the small black circle in the bottom left corner, "that's the sac surrounding the embryo and this-" he moves his finger to the grey dot inside the black circle "-is your baby."

Jake's jaw drops agape as Amy covers her hand over her mouth. They stay silent as the technician begins to get up from his seat.

"I'll leave you two alone for a moment." He says before leaving the ultrasound room.

After a moment, Amy breaks the silence. "We made that, Jake." She says quietly, her voice about to break as her eyes remained glued to the screen in front of her.

"Are you gonna cry?" Jake questions.

Amy shrugs her shoulders slightly. "Maybe, but I can't help it. I'm an emotional person and the pregnancy hormones are all over the place right now," she turns to see her husband, who was very clearly welling up at the sight too, "and you can't say too much." She laughs slightly.

"I'm not crying," he denies, "my eyes are just watering from the lights." He rubs his eyes clear on the sleeve of his shirt.

* * *

Jake and Amy were sat in a blank office, thoughts rushing through their heads. They didn't talk to each other, but the words flew from side to side of their minds.

Suddenly the door opens showing Doctor Hamills, pulling them both out of the word-trance they had fallen into. He greets them and sits on the other side of the desk to face them.

"I hope the ultrasound gave you some surety on the pregnancy, and I must congratulate you on your impending parenthood." He begins, refusing to make eye contact as he looks through the file. His eyes meet theirs eventually. "Which brings me to my next point, but before I start, I must ask if you have any questions?"

Jake and Amy both silently look to each other before glancing back at Doctor Hamills.

He smiles and mumbles, "wonderful." He takes a second, quick glance at the file before looking to them both again.

"From what the ultrasound technician has written down, the embryo is slightly on the smaller side for what would be at the six week stage. You shouldn't be alarmed at this moment, each pregnancy and each developing baby is different, for instance, I have two kids and by the end of both pregnancies, my eldest was measuring a week behind in development while my youngest was two weeks ahead, and they are both completely fine, although they're grumpy teenagers now." He lets out a small laugh.

"Not to be crude, but would we able to get back on to the point of this?" Jake asks, stopping Doctor Hamills in his slight laughing fit to himself.

Doctor Hamills nods and clears his throat. "Anyway, I believe there shouldn't be a reason to be alarmed, although due to your situation right now, the other nurses are a little sceptical. One of the first, tell-tale signs that something is... off with a developing embryo is their growth."

"So what are you saying?" Amy butts in as she felt her heart begin to speed up in her chest.

"What I'm recommending to you is to keep regular appointments with your doctor every two weeks until the end of the first trimester. Right now, it isn't a major problem with the growth, as I said before, it is small, but if it was to continue, with the embryo falling behind even more, we would advise parents to prepare for possible bad news, that being a lifelong physical illness for the baby or in the worst case scenarios, miscarriage or stillbirth, depending at what stage of the pregnancy the mother is at." The doctor says deeply.

"So, there could be something wrong with the baby?" Jake asks.

Doctor Hamills sighs. "We are unclear as of right now."

Amy cuts in again. "One more question, because you never answered my question properly earlier. If there is something wrong with the embryo, what are the chances it could be the same as Jake? I got pregnant during the same week as Jake's cancer development, that must be it, right?"

"Again, we are unsure. During the pregnancy, we'll be able to check on a few of the vital organs - the brain, heart - along with the spinal cord to see if everything's okay, but when it comes to the other organs, such as the stomach in this instinct, they won't be able to be checked thoroughly until the baby is born," the doctor replies, "we have never had a pregnancy in this situation before-"

"Oh, well that makes us feel so special!" Amy says, interrupting the doctor.

"We promise to try our best and keep this baby as healthy as possible, but right now we can't do much. We have to wait and see about their development and take it from there."

* * *

The squad all stand from their chairs in the waiting room as Jake, Amy and Karen come through from the rooms. Charles immediately goes to Jake and hugs him.

"I missed you." he whispers into the detective's shoulder.

"Buddy, you saw me like two hours ago." Jake says with a smile as he patted his friend's back.

"Hey, how'd the ultrasound go? Is everything okay?" Rosa wonders.

Gina stands from her chair and walks over to the squad. "What ultrasound? For what?"

Jake and Amy look to each other quickly before Amy nods her head, allowing her husband to tell his friend. The entire of the squad knew at this point anyway, there was no point trying to hide it - given the fact that Charles knew and he was incapable of keeping a secret.

"Amy and I, we... we're having a baby." Jake says, smiling down at his basically lifelong friend as he feels Charles tense slightly under his grip.

Gina widens her eyes. "What? Since when?" She asks.

"Since about six weeks ago, we've only known a week or so."

Gina goes over to Jake and ushers Charles out of the way so she could hug her friend. After a moment, she invites Amy in on the hug, who graciously accepts.

A second passes and Gina pulls away, raising her eyebrows. "Wait? Why did they have to do an ultrasound?" She asks.

"Oh, Amy got really paranoid when the doctor said that my cancer formed at the same time, so they were checking that she was actually pregnant," he says with a weak smile, "she then cried when the technician showed us the baby."

Amy gently punched her husband's shoulder. "My eyes welled up, you were the one who cried." She mentions.

Jake scoffs slightly under his breath. "That's not true." He mumbles.

A silent moment passes through the squad before Gina speaks up again. "Hey, why don't we all go to Shaw's to celebrate now that both Jake and Amy know what made them get sick a week ago?" She asks.

Charles, Terry, Rosa, Holt and Jake seem to agree with the idea, but Amy seems a little sceptical. "Sorry Gina, but Jake shouldn't drink because he's got chemotherapy tomorrow, and I can't drink anyway."

Gina sighs and begins to complain. "Yeah, but who knows when we might be able to do it again as the entire squad? Come on, you don't have to drink, just be there, please."

Jake somehow gives Amy the puppy dog eyes to make her agree. If her husband could so easily manipulate her into doing what he wanted - granted it may be a slight feeling of guilt knowing that tomorrow night Jake was most likely going to be hunched over the toilet again throwing up his guts due to the chemo - then she was going to be screwed with a baby that was half him.

"Okay, fine, but not too late." She gives in before they all leave for Shaw's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize if anything seems off or not right. Annoyingly I couldn't find anything on google to do with the same situation, and apparently stomach cancer is one of the tougher ones to write about... so yeah and I'm not a doctor (shh) so I don't know about this stuff. 
> 
> I will try to fill any gaps that may be there as the story progresses.
> 
> Also, please don't kill me! :)


	5. Episode 5 - Sing Along

**_Synopsis:_ ** _After Jake's first chemotherapy session, Gina puts together a surprise party at the precinct to keep the spirits high. Rosa and Alicia set a date for their upcoming wedding._

 **_Genre:_ ** _Comedy_

* * *

Just after the clock stroke one in the afternoon, a familiar face pops around the corner, much to the surprise of Jake and Amy.

"Charles? What are you doing here?" Jake wonders, looking up from the game on his tablet he had brought to pass the time.

Charles approaches them both and smiles. "I decided to come and see how you were doing during my lunch break."

Amy looks up from her book with a raised eyebrow. "There's another reason, isn't there?" She guesses.

At first Charles seems to push it away, but after Jake and Amy both glare at him with a knowing look, he comes clean. "Yeah," he nods, slumping forward slightly,

"Gina told me to tell you guys to come to the precinct after the chemo, she's got a little surprise for you."

Jake laughs slightly. "Boyle, it's gonna be like four o'clock when we get out of here."

"And Jake's going to want to go straight home." Amy sighs.

Jake looks to his wife, raising his eyebrows. "What? I might not want to straight away."

Amy rolls her eyes slightly. "Jake, the doctor told us about the side effects."  
Jake nods. "I remember," he recalls before turning to Charles without a second thought, "we'll be there." He promises, making Amy put her head back down to her book.

Charles smiles widely before waving goodbye as he left.

Jake looks back down to his phone before glancing up at his wife again a moment later when she begins to talk.

"You're going to fall asleep on that break room couch, you know." She says, keeping her eyes on reading.

Jake scoffs. "Ten bucks says I won't."

Amy glances up and raises the bet between them before a silence fell upon them both as Jake looks back down to his phone.

"It's gonna be the easiest ten bucks I'm gonna make." She says, breaking the silence.

"Well, prepare to lose said ten bucks, because I feel absolutely fine, and I can't wait to see what Gina's put together."

* * *

As promised, they both arrive at the precinct at around half-four to see what Gina's surprise for them was. After Gina's departure from the nine-nine, she hasn't been inside the precinct an awful lot for what they all like to believe that it brings back memories from her job.

Jake and Amy ride the elevator in silence, Amy watching her husband for the tell-tale first signs of the chemo kicking in. He had almost fallen asleep in the car, but then Taylor Swift came on the radio and he resisted the fatigue to sing along with the music.

As soon as the doors slid open to the fourth floor, the squad (minus Rosa, Holt, Hitchcock and Scully) and Gina all cheer.

The bullpen had been decorated with balloons and all the desks had been pushed away to the side of the room. The key elements was the karaoke machine they had somehow managed to get in.

"What's all this?" Jake asks, walking over to Gina, his jaw slightly agape.

"Well, do you remember in middle school when your Nana would take us to the bar near her apartment and we'd constantly play the songs and sing?"

Jake smiles widely and nods. "You got the machine from the bar?"

Gina sighs and shakes her head quickly. "Oh, no, that bar shut down years ago, something about rats and mice living in the food storage room and contaminating the food," she replies, making the entire room but Jake and herself grimace, "but this is a similar one with all the most recent releases!"

"Oh, my god, Gina, that's amazing!" Jake continues to smile broadly.

"I know!" Gina brags, opening up her arms to hug her childhood best friend.

* * *

Alicia looks over the calendar in the middle of the table for the dozenth time. "Okay, we've got the venue, we've got several dates in mind, we just need to narrow it down to one." She says, trying not to piss off her fiancée anymore than she seemed to be.

"Babe, I don't know, I like all of them, why don't you just pick? I promise I'll like it." Rosa sighs, throwing her hands down on the table.

Alicia nods and looks to the dates that were jotted down in the notepad in front of her. She scans her eyes through each date and picks one randomly. "Okay, how about March 13th?" She looks back up to Rosa with her eyebrows raised.

After a brief second, Rosa shakes her head. "Can't do that day, it's my sister's birthday."

"Why didn't you just say that and we could have crossed the date off the list?"

"Because you know too much about my family already." Rosa responds quickly, crossing her arms over her chest as she slumps in her chair slightly.

Alicia sighs, placing her hands across the table, reaching for Rosa's. "Babe, we're getting married, you don't have to worry about sharing things about your family." She says, smiling in her fiancée's direction.

Rosa curls the edges of her lips to a smile. She nods before saying, "how about a different day? Which other one's are there?"

"July 18th?" Alicia asks, looking back down to the notepad.

Rosa thinks about it slightly before shaking her head. "My mom and dad's wedding anniversary."

Alicia nods and picks up the pen, crossing the date off the list. "Okay then? August 15th?"

Rosa immediately shakes her head. "My niece's birthday."

_*2 minutes later*_

"June 4th?" Alicia wonders.

Rosa shakes her head. "Too similar to May 4th, and my brother-in-law won't stop going on about Star Wars."

_*5 minutes later*_

"January 8th?" Alicia asks, knowing the response will be no. She was now resting her head in the palm of her left hand while her right hand was killing her from crossing off all the dates on their list.

"No, my nephew has a school play that day." Rosa responds.

Alicia bows her head down slightly, her hunch about her fiancée's response was correct, before crossing off yet another date from the list.

_*10 minutes later*_

"How about March 24th?" The agitated woman asks, her head falling lower and lower to the table.

Along with her fiancée, Alicia shakes her head and says "no" at the same time as Rosa, before listening to her short explanation as to why.

Alicia suddenly stands up and goes toward the door, making Rosa sit up in her seat. "Where are you going? I thought we were picking a date." The detective wonders as she watches her fiancée grab her coat by the door and begin to walk out of the apartment.

"I'm going on a coffee run, I feel like we're gonna be here a while, and I want some energy." Alicia says, stopping in her tracks and facing Rosa at the table.

"But there's coffe-" Rosa begins before being interrupted by Alicia yelling "Bye!" as she walked out the apartment and shut the door.

* * *

Gina looks back up to Jake after having messed around with the machine for ages. It refused to work the first few times, which resulted in Gina angrily kicking at it, which then followed with less usage out of it. Jake was now sitting at his desk playing with a knick-knack he had on it as he was finding it harder and harder to stand around while waiting for Gina to fix the machine.

"There you go, all done." Gina states, obviously quite proud of herself.

"You completely sure? Because it seemed to be fixed three minutes ago, but it fell apart after that." Terry wonders, raising his eyebrows at the civilian.

Gina nods slowly. "Yes, I'm _completely sure_." She says, making dragged out, lower voice to mock the sergeant.

The civilian goes across the bullpen and grabs Jake's hand after he refused to stand up. She gently pulled him back across and gave him a microphone, allowing him to pick a song.

As soon as the music starts, the detective seems to regain the some of the energy that had been decreasing in him since they arrived at the precinct.  
He smiles widely as he begins belting out Taylor Swift through the microphone, insisting that Gina was to start singing along. She declines and the somewhat overly-excited detective hands off the microphone to Charles, who immediately begins singing along with Jake.

Halfway through the song, Amy catches in the corner of her eye hat Jake was stifling back a yawn. She steps forward and gains his attention. "You getting tired, Jake?" She asks, a smile present on her face.

Jake sees his wife's playful glance before he quickly shakes his head. "No, I feel more awake than ever." He declares.

Amy heads back over to where she was before, gaining a look from Terry.

"What was that about?" The tall sergeant asks, hiding a smile of the two best friends performing the duet together.

"After a chemo session, most patients begin to feel fatigue. I bet Jake ten bucks that he'll fall asleep on the break room couch seen as he insisted on coming here." Amy responds.

Terry looks to the female sergeant. "Just be glad he wanted to come out. My uncle had the same as him when I was growing up and after every chemo session, he never wanted to leave his bed. It's nice to see Jake's still got energy to sing a duet with Charles." He chuckles.

Amy nods slightly. "He's Jake, his energy is boundless." She says slowly as Terry's words repeat in her mind.

As she begins to watch her husband intently, her mind begins to wander all over the place, sending her head spinning. They had talked briefly the night before when they returned from Shaw's about the consequences of the chemotherapy and much about the side effects - the nausea and vomiting (when Jake mentioned the throwing up wouldn't bother him anymore seen as he had got used to it slightly over the past week or so, it shattered Amy's heart to know he felt that way), along with him losing his hair down the road.

The dizzying thoughts became to much at one point, Amy had to go and sit down at her husband's desk, where the thoughts began to rack up even more.

What would happen if the chemotherapy was to be unsuccessful? And what if any other method of preventing the spread of the cancerous tumour was ineffective? How would Amy deal with raising the baby and looking after Jake simultaneously? Or how would she be able to cope with the single-parent thing shortly after losing her husband?

Just then, an excited squeal from her husband and his best friend is enough to break her from the trance and bring her back to reality. She notices her eyes were filled with tears, but a blink and a wipe of her sleeve checked that away - just before Jake was able to see.

Jake can sense something was off with his wife, so he hands off the microphone to Charles, who was searching through the list of songs for the next one to perform, and saying he'll be back in a second. He approaches his wife and sits on the desk beside her. "You okay, Ames?" He wonders, looking to her with his eyebrows raised.

Amy nods slightly. "Yeah, I'm fine. How are you feeling?"

Jake shrugs. "Alright," he sighs, "not at all tired." He says with a smile as he shook his head.

"Jake, if you're tired, we can go home. I'm not forcing you to stay here." Amy insists.

"I'm not tired, I promise." He declares.

"Okay, if you say so."

* * *

Alicia wanders into the apartment, looking around the door for Rosa. The detective was still sat at the table, scrolling through her phone. She goes over and places a coffee mug on the table. "Here, I grabbed you one too, I feel as though you might need it." She says with a gentle smile.

Rosa leans forward and grabs hold of the paper cup. "Thanks," she takes a sip of the coffee, the edges of her lips curling up subtly as she swallowed the warm beverage. She leans back in her chair and looks up to Alicia, who had taken a seat beside her. "Look, I'm sorry for not saying about the dates and how most of them wouldn't work for me. To save us anymore problems and time, I have gone through and crossed all the dates off that don't work for me." Rosa mentions, handing over the notepad to her fiancée.

Alicia takes the notebook and skims her eyes over each date, everyone appearing to be crossed out. After looking through the page of dates, she looks back up to Rosa. "Babe, we had twenty-six dates on here and you didn't tell me that you had something going on for twenty-five of them?"

"I said I'm sorry." Rosa sighs.

Alicia shakes her head, a smile spreading on her face. "Well, we've only got one more date on the list. Do you want to brainstorm more dates, or are you busy three-hundred and sixty-four days of the year, this one being the only one you're free?" She looks up, raising her eyebrows.

Rosa looks over sternly, crossing her arms over her chest. "We're not going through anymore dates unless that one doesn't work for you."  
"No, it does work for me, as I wrote it down. I knew I wouldn't have anything on that day." Alicia responds.

"Okay."

"Okay." Alicia repeats.

"Great." A moment pauses before Rosa looks back up to Alicia. "Did we just pick a wedding date?" She asks, her voice still in an angry tone.

"I think so."

"Great!" Rosa smiles widely.

* * *

It was now roughly an hour later, Terry and Charles were singing loudly to their dozenth or so song, and were very clearly enjoying their time up by the mic.

Jake was sitting at his desk chair again, given the fact he was feeling the complete wrath of the side effects following the chemotherapy at this point - his stomach was starting to churn and he felt as though one wrong move would have him running to the men's bathroom, and he was stifling off yawns every two or three seconds to try and prove to Amy he wasn't going to fall asleep.

Gina approaches her childhood best friend and sits on his desk beside him. "You okay, girl?" She wonders, raising her eyebrows at him.

Jake slowly looks to her and smiles weakly. "Yeah, I feel - fine."

"You sure? You look like a sheet and you're starting to sweat a little."

"Yes, Gina, I'm completely fine." Jake nods, looking back to the sergeant and his best friend as they say along together.

"Jake-y," the civilian grabs the detective's attention, "if you feel like you're gonna throw up, go to the bathroom."

He doesn't have a chance to answer, as hearing the words is enough of a trigger to send him sprinting down the corridor.

Amy rushes in from the break room and stops by her husband's desk, turning to Gina. "What was all that about?" She asks, raising her voice even though the entire bullpen had come to a stop.

"All I told him was that if he needed to throw up, he should go to the bathroom. Then he just ran off."

Amy sighs before slowly following her husband through to the men's bathroom. when she opens the restroom door, the room if in complete silence. She could hear quiet mild noises of discomfort coming from the stall at the other side of the room. She goes over and leans against the open-stall doorframe. "Any stall and you pick the end one." She says, smiling at her words - her heart breaking at the sight.

Jake had his head rested against the stall wall he was sitting up against. He was paler than usual, and she swore she caught a brief glance of circles appearing under his eyes.

"Mmm, shut up." He sighs hoarsely, not bothering to look to her.

Amy walks in the stall and slides down the wall to sit beside him. "You feeling any better?" She asks, a saddened look in her eye.

Jake slowly shakes his head, still staring up at the ceiling. "I hoped I would, but I still feel like crap. The shit burned, Ames."

Amy's breath hitched at the back of her throat to stop herself from crying. She can't wait to break out the excuse of pregnancy hormones as to why she was spontaneously crying at almost every little thing, but this wasn't the hormones. She was certain her heart had broken to see her bouncy husband sitting on the filthy, precinct, men's bathroom floor after having just thrown up as a result of the chemotherapy he had just started - she was also certain that wouldn't be the final time that night.

She rests her had against his shoulder as she attempts to wrap her arm over his back. "I'm sorry, babe. Can I get you anything?" She wonders.

He looks up to slowly to this offer. He hesitates slightly before meeting his eyes with hers. "A glass of water? Just to drown out the taste." He asks.

She smiles. "Okay." She presses a chaste kiss to his forehead before she stood up and exited the bathroom.

She went back through to the bullpen and began to make a beeline for the break room before everyone immediately crowded around her.

"What was all that?" Terry asks, "Did he throw up?" Gina wonders, "Is Jake-y okay?" Charles questions, all at the same time.

Amy looks to all of them, thinking about how to answer the bombard of questions. "I was just a side effect of the chemo, Terry. Gina, yes, he did throw up. And Charles, yes he is okay."

She pushes past them and goes to the break room, re-emerging a moment later holding a mug filled with water. She stops to face the squad one more time before going back to the bathroom. "Gina, thank you for organizing this, that was the first time I've seen him smile today. But I think I might just take him home now."

Gina nods. "That's fine, thanks for actually coming today, it was nice that I was able to make him smile. It doesn't matter though, I was thinking about heading home too, I've left Iggy with Milton all day, and that girl can drag it out sometimes."

Amy smiles and thanks the civilian again before turning around and making her way to the bathroom her husband was in. She got to the stall to see that Jake hadn't moved since she left. She sits beside him again, holding out the mug. "Hey, I brought you some water like you asked."

Jake doesn't move.

She calls his name, and like before, he doesn't respond.

Amy can feel her heartrate pick up in her chest as she feels her stomach drop. She shakes his shoulder, and he doesn't flinch - he stays completely still.  
"Jake, come on, this isn't funny." She sighs, putting the mug down on the floor beside her.

Instead of a verbal response, her husband lets out a subtle snore, making her relax and smile slightly. As much as she wants to get him home to bed, she doesn't have it in her heart to wake him up.

She quietly stands to her feet again, exiting the bathroom and going straight over to Terry - who was helping pack up everything in the bullpen.

"Hey, Terry, can I ask a favour?" She wonders.

The large sergeant nods. "Yeah, sure, what do you need?"

"Jake's fallen asleep in the bathroom and I can't wake him up. He's so exhausted. Would you be able to carry him out to my car and strap him in, please?"

Terry smiles and nods before following the female sergeant through to the bathroom. He picks the limp detective up as carefully as he can as to not wake him up.

After Jake returned from prison he had become the lightest sleeper, unable to sleep through a penny dropping in a nearby room, but surprisingly being picked up by another person, being carried out the building and strapped into the car didn't seem to wake him up.

Terry shuts the passenger side door as quietly as he can before turning back to Amy. She smiles and thanks him, allowing him to return back up to the bullpen to continue what he was doing. She then hugs the sergeant as he goes back toward the elevator before getting behind the driver's seat and driving as cautiously as possible back to their apartment.

Right now she was letting him sleep, because she knew she'd have to wake him up before going up to their apartment.

* * *

An hour later, Jake begins to stir in the seat next to her. Amy looks up from her phone, watching his with a gentle smile as he begins to come back to reality.

"Hey, sleepy bones, how you feeling?" She whispers quietly once he opens his eyes.

He looks around slightly, eyes adjusting to the light. "Where are we?" He asks, his words slurred slightly.

"Outside the apartment, I was just waiting for you to wake up." Amy responds.

"How long have we been here?" He asks, furrowing his eyebrows.

"About an hour. I was going to wake you up, but I just couldn't. You looked too peaceful." She says, smiling slightly at her husband.

"So you've just been sitting here for an hour waiting for me to wake up?" He asks, beginning to sit up slightly in his seat.

Amy nods slowly. "By the way, my mom and dad are wishing you the best and that they can't wait to see you soon."

"You dad said he was looking forward to seeing me?" Jake can't help but raise his eyebrows.

Amy quickly shakes her head. "Oh, no, my mom said she can't wait to see you." She corrects.

Just then, both Amy and Jake's phones both ping simultaneously. Amy reaches down and opens the text message she had just received, Jake doing the same, just at a slower pace.

"Who is it?" Jake asks.

"It's Rosa, you might wanna read it." Amy says, smiling at her phone.

Jake finally gets his phone from his pocket, his home screen alerting him he had two things he had to see: a text from Rosa on the Nine-Nine group chat, and an alert saying Charles had tagged him in a post six hours before.

He read the text first, a small smile appearing on his face.

 _**From: Rosa Diaz (to the Nine-Nine chat)** _  
_**18:34 pm** _

_**Hey just thought Alicia and I should let you guys know that we're getting married on February 11th, so you'd better save the damn date!** _

"Hey, they picked a date." Jake says over to Amy, the smile still present.

He looks back down to his phone and finds the picture Charles tagged him in at lunch time. Once he found it, he smiles when he sees it was a picture of both Charles and himself taken a year prior. They were sitting at their desks, seen as they were touching at the time due to Holt's battle against the commissioner. It seemed as though it was a normal picture, but the statement attached below made it seem like a cover for a novel.

It read:

_**Jake Peralta** is one of the toughest people I know. In our friendship he has been through the worst and it is something that proves his true and inner strength. He has been through six months undercover with the mafia, six months in witness protection in Florida and two months in a supermax prison for a crime he didn't commit. But during that time, he has proved to me and the entire of the Nine-Nine that he is as badass as **Rosa** , although he doesn't always show it._

_He is my best friend, and I have been lucky enough to know him for over a decade now. I've seen him change from a childish boy to this amazing man and fantastic husband. He is always striving to be the best he can be, and I know he will make an amazing father in the future. Sure he can have a slip-up from now and then, but he always recovers do what will make **Amy** happy. She is truly lucky to have such an amazing and caring husband._

_The two of us have been through so much together, and even if the memory is from a dark time, I treasure it, because every moment I get to spend with him is something worth remembering. He is the best person I have ever met, and I'm happy as well as thankful that we were put in the same precinct all those years ago._

_He is a kind, caring, wonderful person, and I'm so glad he gets to be a part of my son's life. He has a best friend-like bond with Niko, and it's everything I've ever wanted. His bond with Cagney, Lacey and Ava is unbreakable as well, **Terry** and **Sharon** are lucky to have him as a part of their kid's lives too. This just proves he'll be amazing with his own kid._

_He has never failed to put a smile on my face, and he is constantly trying his hardest to give the same effect on everyone else. He has a great sense of humour - even if some people struggle to see it. He even still managed to crack a joke or two after having received the news of having stage two stomach cancer just yesterday. I am truly thankful to have such an amazing friend like **Jake**. He is one of a kind, and every single person needs a friend like him - he is the best one you can get._

_I wish **Jake** the best on his first chemotherapy session today, that it all goes to plan and that he doesn't have to be on it for too long._

_I love you buddy, and I hope to see you later today xx_

"Jake? You okay?" Amy wonders.

Jake looks up to see his wife's confused look. He wipes his eyes from the tears that had formed while reading Charles' post. He nods with a smile on his face. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Is it the post Charles put on earlier?" Amy guesses, given how long he had been staring at his phone.

Jake sniffs slightly, nodding as he looked back up to Amy. "Yeah. I really liked it."

Amy smiles in his direction. "You should see the comments." She says.

This makes Jake go through his phone again, finding the six comments.

_**Terry Jeffords (12:16 pm):** You're amazing **Jake** , we wish you the best!_

_**Gina Linetti (12:43 pm): J ake **you go girl! You're gonna kick this cancer's ass, it has no idea what's about to hit it! Can't wait to see you soon, sending wishes xx_

_**Sharon Jeffords (12:57 pm):** Good luck **Jake , **Ava's wishing her godfather gets better soon_

_**Genevieve Mirren-Carter (13:06 pm):** Get well soon **J ake**_

_**Raymond Holt (14:23 pm):** Wishing you the best, **Jake** , with a nice speedy recovery._

_**Rosa Diaz (14:54 pm): Gina **said exactly what I was going to. Don't worry **Jake** you're gonna do awesome!_

Jake looks up and smiles. He accidentally reloads the page before seeing that a seventh comment had pinged through.

_**Amy Santiago (18:38 pm): Rosa **and **Gina** are right. **Jake** 's the strongest person ever, he's going to do this and will have amazing stories to tell at the end. I love you, babe. (And you owe me ten bucks, you fell asleep at the precinct) <3_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you think Jake or Amy won the bet? I'm not too sure. 
> 
> Amy said he'd fall asleep on the break room couch, and Jake claims he wouldn't. He then fell asleep in the precinct bathroom. Who won? My younger brother recons Jake did, but I'm guessing Amy would win because he fell asleep inside the precinct.
> 
> Be sure to let me know, it would really help because I know my brother won't let it go otherwise!


	6. Episode 6 - HVIIoween

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took so long, I wanted the Halloween justice, but it lead to intense writers block. I also apologize in advance if this chapters bad, it's hard to write a Halloween episode! 
> 
> Also, huge shoutout to LovingCrossovers, your comments made my entire day!

_**Synopsis** : The Precinct hosts its annual Halloween heist, making every last man for himself. Jake undercovers something to do with him and confronts the squad._

_**Genre** : Comedy_

* * *

Holt walks into the briefing room before standing behind the podium at the front. He looks around the room before stopping his glances at one of the front tables. "Peralta, Santiago, I thought you said you both weren't coming in today."

Amy nods. "That's what I thought too." She sighs.

"Are you wearing a piece of Peralta's clothing?" Holt raises an eyebrow at the large hoodie the sergeant was wearing.

"Yeah, I had to grab the first thing I could find when he-" she points to Jake beside her "-bolted out the apartment."

Jake had received his second dose of chemo the day before, and the side effects had hit pretty badly the night before. He had said he wasn't feeling up to going into work, but suddenly decided to run out of the apartment saying he was going to take part in the heist, so Amy grabbed the first cover-up clothing item and followed him out of the apartment. She knew there was no use in trying to convince him to go back up to the apartment as he wouldn't back down, so she gave in and drove them to the precinct instead.

"Well, now you're here, maybe you could help announce the heist?" Holt wonders, moving to the side of the podium slightly.

Jake jumps up from his seat and approaches the podium, Amy slowly following him.

"Okay, Nine-Nine, today is Halloween, which can only mean one thing; It's time for the annual Halloween heist!" Jake announces to the briefing room, making everyone cheer, "this year, however, there is a catch. Those who have won a previous heist must stay locked in the evidence room at the beginning, giving others a head start. The longer ago you won, the less time you spend."

"But isn't Amy claustrophobic?" Charles asks, cutting in from his friend.

Jake nods. "Which is why I have asked the very considerate Matt-" he points to an unhappy uniformed officer "-to stand help in the room with us until we're all released."

"The order of release from the evidence locker with be: Jake, Captain Holt, myself, and then Hitchcock and Scully, because they somehow won last year." Amy explains.

"There would be another person if Peralta hadn't sabotaged the fifth heist." Holt adds, crossing his arms over his chest.

Jake looks to the captain before back to the briefing room. "There would also be another person if you hadn't pissed off the commissioner so much that he shut the precinct down for two weeks over the heist two years ago even though you knew your feud ended months before."

"I wanted the last laugh." Holt states.

"Although in turn, he had the last laugh, and you had already had the last laugh!"

Amy rolls her eyes at her husband and commanding officer before bringing the subject back to what it was on before. "All the previous winners will be locked together for twenty minutes before the first person is to be released. From there, the following people will be released every five minutes. Gary has offered to stand outside the evidence locker to release us."

"The winner will be whoever is in possession of these-" Holt grabs a tiny box from the top of the stand and opens it to the briefing room, showing off two diamond encrusted earrings "- at midnight. They will be locked in this room when the coast is clear." He says before subtly turning his gaze to Jake. "And as you can see, they have not been inscribed this year as Peralta can easily sabotage it."

Jake sighs. "Oh, will you let that go?"

"Alright, both of you, stop it!" Amy scowls at them, making them both go quiet. Before she can get the subject back on to the heist, she sees her husband open his mouth to say something to the captain before she cuts him off. "Hey! I'll take you home again."

Jake goes back to standing still in between his wife and captain.

"Damn, Santiago, where'd you learn to do that?" Rosa asks out.

"I grew up with seven brothers, it's easy." The sergeant responds truthfully.

Charles looks in awe. "She's gonna be an amazing mom."

Amy raises her eyebrows before looking to her husband and captain. "Okay, this is beginning to get weird. Let's start the heist!"

A second cheer escapes everyone as they stand from their tables and exit the briefing room together. Matt then unhappily escorts the previous winners toward the evidence room, with Gary walking cheerfully behind them.

* * *

The evidence room door clicked shut as it hit the frame, the sound of the key turning in the lock sealing the deal. Jake apprehensively looks around the room before locking eyes with his captain.

"Whatever you're planning, you might as well give it up, because I'm gonna win this heist. This is my year."

Holt chuckles slightly. "Oh, but you've said that every year since the first heist, Peralta, but everyone has been a step ahead of you."

"But I believe you've forgotten how many hours I've spent in the hospital the past month. I get a lot of alone time because Amy's always falling asleep." Jake mentions with a coy smirk.

Amy scoffs slightly under her breath. "I'm not always falling asleep." She defends.

"You fell asleep, like, ten minutes into my chemo yesterday." He reasons.

"That's because I had been up all night." Amy sighs, crossing her arms over her chest, glaring at her husband.

He raises his eyebrows at her. "Why are you looking at me like I'm to blame? You were the one throwing up."

Amy smirks to him, knowing she'd caught him in between a rock and a hard place. "And why was I throwing up?"

Jake glares at her, trying to hide a smile at his wife's quick thinking whilst crossing his arms over his chest. Instead of responding with a thought out response, he mutters under his breath. "Shut up." He whispers before looking away.

Hitchcock and Scully, in the other corner of the room, look to each other with raised eyebrows before back toward the (almost) bickering couple and captain. "Why was Amy throwing up?" Scully wondered as his partner nodded along with his question.

Jake and Amy exchange a look of confusion along with exhaustion - both physically and mentally. "Seriously, how did they win a heist?" Amy wonders, raising her eyebrows.

* * *

Holt slowly approached the sergeant in front of him with caution. "Santiago, are you feeling okay?" He questions.

The total amount of time it had been since the door locked the first time was twenty-two minutes, and Jake had been let out two minutes before. Amy had been fine before he left but, all of a sudden, it had seemed that her claustrophobia was starting to get the better of her.

She nods slowly, eyeing her captain. "Yeah... I'm fine." She mumbles.

Holt stands to her side. "If you don't want to be in here any longer, that's completely fine. Don't force it on yourself. It's not good for you, and certainly not for the baby." He sighs.

Amy looks to her captain and smiles weakly. "Thank you for worrying, but I'll be okay. I have to be. And anyway, it's only like ten more minutes."

Holt raises his eyebrows. "Why do you believe you have to be okay?"

"Mm?" Amy wonders, only catching half of what the commanding officer had asked.

"I questioned why you believed you had to be okay."

The sergeant widens her eyes subtly. "I didn't say that. Why would I say that?" She denies, making the superior officer raise his eyebrows even more.

"Santiago, don't lie to me. Why did you say it?" He wonders.

She sighs quietly, dropping her gaze quickly to her feet. " _It'sadumbreasonIdon'twannasay_." She mumbles, answering as if her words were sprinting a marathon.

"What was that?" Holt crosses his arms over his chest.

" _It'sadumbreason, Idon'twannasay._ " Amy says a little slower, but it was still too quick and quiet to understand what she actually said.

"Repeat that one more time," he encourages before cutting her off, "but before you do, make sure you say it loudly and slow enough for me understand what you're trying to tell me, sergeant." He instructs.

Amy takes a deep breath before looking her captain in the eyes. "It's a dumb reason, I don't want to say it."

"I'm sure whatever it is, it is not dumb, Santiago." He sighs.

"But this really is, so it's much better if you don't ask." Amy replies.

Holt only glares subtly at the sergeant, making her cave in.

"I'm telling you now, this is a really stupid reason, so you can laugh if you want to." Amy mentions.

Holt nods once. "Noted."

Amy sighs and inhales a deep breath before explaining. "I have this feeling that I have to be strong in front of Jake so he doesn't worry. His mom told me that allowing him to see you panic in a time like this will only get in his head and make him worry more about the situation more than he needs to... I'm worried that Jake seeing me anxious, in turn, will make him worse about the baby or the cancer. I don't want that, I don't want him to be scared, so I've got to pull myself together on things that might cause him to spiral."

The captain nods again. After a moment of silence, he gathers that she is finished before speaking himself. "Can I offer my advice?" He asks.

"Yes, of course." Amy says, a little bit on the quicker side.

"I can see you have a lot to be apprehensive on but in my experience, hiding things from your partner isn't always the best solution. You should talk to Peralta about your fears. It may seem scary now, but it's always the better way of dealing with panic in the long run."

Amy smiles weakly to the superior officer. "Thank you, captain."

Just then, the evidence room door swung open again. Gary popped his head through the frame and met his eyes with the captain. "Holt, you can leave now."

Raymond looks to the door before back at the sergeant. Amy smiles at him and tells him to go, knowing why he was retreating.

"Are you sure?" He wonders.

Amy nods. "Yes, I'll be fine. Hitchcock and Scully are asleep too, which is a plus. Go try and win the heist."

Holt curls the edges of his lips to a smile before leaving the evidence room, the door almost slamming shut behind him.

* * *

The heist was in full swing now, everyone watching the briefing room door with great intensity. It had been an hour or so at this point, and nobody had noticed someone enter (or try to enter) the briefing room.

Everyone was sat at their desks - Amy sitting at her old one from when she was a detective - apart from Hitchcock and Scully, who were still asleep in the evidence room. The entire room was giving second glances and questionable glares at each other as if trying to read the person's mind to find out their next move. Not a word had been said since Amy was released from the evidence locker, and if it hadn't been for the bustling holding cell, the bullpen would have been dead silent.

Suddenly, Rosa quickly stands from her desk, making everyone jump slightly in their seats. The detective quickly makes her way over to Amy's old desk before gathering her from the chair against her will and pushing her into the break room and shutting the door behind her.

Terry, Charles, and Jake all look to the door with curiosity as it shuts before meeting eyes at each other. Jake raises his eyebrows and looks to Charles. "What was all that about?"

Charles shrugs lightly. "I don't know." He sighs.

Jake looks to Terry for an answer, who just shrugs his shoulders as well, not saying anything before he turns back to the file he was filling out.

The break room quickly opens again, the detective walking out again, leaving the sergeant stood in the room quietly.

Jake pounces up from his desk and goes to the break room before anyone else can. He shuts the door slightly, so it's left ajar, and stands a foot away from his wife, crossing his arms over his chest.

"What was that?" He wonders.

"What was what?" Amy asks.

Jake gives a questioning look. "That." He states, pointing to the door behing him.

Amy shrugs her shoulders. "Don't worry about it."

"You seem to be saying that a lot at the moment. Was whatever Diaz dragged you out here for anything to do with why you keep saying that to me?" Jake questions, raising his eyebrows.

She gives her husband a questionable look. "In what world would they be related?"

"I don't know, you tell me." He mumbles.

Amy sighs. "Believe me, Jake, they are not related in any way shape or form." She state before leaving him in the room.

* * *

Another hour had passed and nobody had made a swing for the earrings yet. Out of curiosity, Jake stood from his desk and walked over the bullpen to the outside of the briefing room. As soon as the detective got to the door, everyone else was stood from their desks and were rushing over too.

"I'm not doing anything, I'm seeing if they're still in there." He mentions before peering his head through the slightly ajar door. He spots the small box sitting on one of the tables before taking his head back out. He turns to the squad who had crowded around him and nods. "They're still there."

"Why'd you check?" Rosa wondered, stopping Jake as he went to walk past her back to his desk.

"Because it's been two hours now and nobody has tried to take them, I was just making sure there was still something to take in order to win the heist."

"Why should I believe you? You could have snuck those earrings out of the briefing room and are just saying that to throw us off the scent."

"As cool as that would be, you can even check. They're still in there."

Jake goes to walk back to his desk before catching Amy looking at Rosa with a look as if she was trying to remind her of something.

The elevator dinging from across the room, bringing in another screaming perp brought his attention away from it, making him forget about it as the resistant perp across the room left him with a pounding headache instead.

* * *

__

"Hey, Diaz, can you come over here quick?" Charles ushered the detective over to his desk.

Rosa reluctantly stood from her desk and walked over, sitting in the chair beside the other detective. "Before you ask, again, no, I will not team up with you."

"I wasn't going to ask you that again."

"Then what do you want?"

"You know the thing Amy asked us to do?" Charles wonders, leaning in closer to Diaz as not to be overheard.

"Yes, I am aware of what she wants us to do."

"Well, I don't know how much longer I can hide it from him. You know I'm not good at secrets, and this is Jake we are talking about, I tell him everything." The male detective sighs.

Rosa hit the man's arm as gently as she could. "Look, Amy won't back down on the idea, no matter how hard you push with her, so you're just gonna have to keep your mouth shut."

Charles suddenly leaps up slightly, squealing under his breath. "Jake's coming." He says as he looks down the hall that goes back to the evidence room.

The thunderous bullpen quickly goes quiet as Jake stands in the middle of the bullpen, glaring down at his wife, calling her name loudly upon her.

She looks up at him and raises his eyebrows. "You okay?"

He quickly shakes his head. "You'll never guess what I just heard Hitchcock and Scully mumbling in their sleep when I went into the evidence room to wake them up." He looks around the room, to see everyone looking away from him. He turns his gaze back to Amy. "That you asked everyone to go easy on me."

Amy quickly stands from her chair. "Why would you think I would do that?" She wonders.

"Oh, don't even try and defend yourself. I know that's why Rosa took you into the break room and you wouldn't tell me why, I know that's why you gave her that look you give when you're trying to remind somebody of something."

"Jake, I wouldn't do anything like that."

"Admit it because I know it was you. Rosa wouldn't because I know she doesn't give a crap about doing it and Charles is too loyal to do it without telling me. Also, I heard Hitchcock and Scully mumble that it was you, so just come clean."

Amy sighs. "Alright fine, I did do it, but only to make sure you didn't end up in the hospital again. I worry about you Jake, because you're trying to push the cancer away and make it seem as though it isn't there."

"Sorry, I'm just trying to have fun."

"You're not having fun, Jake. You're still living in denial." Amy corrects. "And I'm trying to make sure that by you living in denial, you don't hurt yourself."

"I'm not in denial. I know I have cancer, I know what has to happen, you made that clear when we found out. I'm just trying to take advantage of what I have left because this might be my last Halloween."

Amy raises her eyebrows to her husband. "What makes you think it's gonna be your last Halloween?"

Jake looks around the room but keeps his voice to himself and doesn't respond.

"Jake, look, I'm sorry, but I don't want to see you get hurt any more than you have to while getting the chemotherapy."

Jake crosses his arms over his chest. "Well, you don't have to worry anymore. I won't take part in the heist, I'll stay sat at my desk for the rest of the night and I won't move. Does that put down your fears?"

Amy sighs again. "Don't do that, Jake, everyone can just go back to playing the heist normally."

"Don't bother. I'm not in the mood anymore." He rejects before angrily shuffling into the break room.

* * *

Like the rest of the night, the bullpen was hustling with perps that had been caught on the busiest night of the year, but yet the activity from the squad was minimal; Terry was arguing with one of the noiser perps behind the bars into the holding cell, Charles was on the phone to Genevieve and Nikolaj, Amy was in the break room, and Rosa was talking with Jake. 

Suddenly, Holt leaves his office, slamming the door a little too loudly, letting the people around him know of his presence.

The captain goes toward the break room, making everyone stop what they were doing and stare at him as he passed through the bullpen.

Once the captain remerges from the break room a moment later before heading to his office again, everyone around him goes back to normal.

Jake looks to Rosa with his eyebrows raised. "What was all that about? He was in the break room, like, ten seconds."

"Why do you care? I thought you said you weren't doing the heist." Rosa crosses her arms over her chest, leaning back into the chair beside the other detective's desk.

The male detective shrugs. "I'm not, but I'm just pointing it out because you are. Maybe you should look into it to help you win the heist. I'm being considerate."

"I think you not taking part in the heist was a dumb idea." Rosa remarks, making Jake look to her with a confused look. "What I'm saying is that you could prove people wrong."

Jake blows it off. "No, I'm choosing to pout. Amy will come to her senses soon enough and know that she was in the wrong making you guys do that."

"She did it in your best interest." The female detective mumbles.

"Well, I'm sorry I wanted to have a little fun. The chemo's being a bitch and this was the only thing I could look forward too." He sulks into his seat.

"Did you plan for the heist?" Rosa asks.

Jake shakes his head. "No, I thought it'd be more fun by winging it." He says with a hint of a smile before going straight-faced again. "But it doesn't matter now."

Rosa sits forward, leaning in a little to the detective. "Why don't you just join in again?"

"No, because I want to teach Amy a lesson." He says and before Rosa can cut in, he's standing from his desk. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to the bathroom."

"Amy said you go to the bathroom every couple days, didn't you go, like, an hour ago?" Rosa turns her head to face the male detective as he begins walking to the men's bathroom.

Jake stops in his tracks and turns on his heels, making eye contact with Rosa. "Yeah, but like I said before, this chemo's a bitch."

Rosa rolls her eyes once the detective's walked away before standing from the chair and going back to her own desk. Halfway there, she bumps into Holt, who had left his office again.

"Oh, captain, sorry." Rosa apologizes before raising her eyebrows. "Where are you off to, sir?"

Holt takes a step back from the detective, fumbling slightly on an answer. "I'm just, you know, going downstairs, reporting an issue with my server."

"Really? The internet's fine for everyone else."

Suddenly, the lights switch off, making the entire floor envelop into darkness. The only light able to illuminate the bullpen was the streetlights from outside but, unfortunately, they were four floors down, so they didn't really do much to light the room. It was impossible to see anything.

"What the hell is going on?!" Terry yells from somewhere in the room.

"Somebody's cut the power!" Charles cries out from his desk.

Rosa turns in that direction not able to see anything though. "No, it's just gone dark for no reason!" She sneers to the other detective.

Just as they did when switching off, the lights all suddenly come back on, filling the floor again with it's usual light.

The squad all quickly turn around to find the briefing room doors swung wide open. They all run to the open doors and peer their heads through and turn their gaze to the now empty table the earring box had once been on.

"The earrings! They're gone!" Charles lets out another fact from the middle of the swarmed group of officers.

Rosa glares to Charles over Terry's back. "Will you please stop pointing out the obvious?!"

* * *

The squad had all returned back to their desks, and were all glaring at one another from across the room.

Jake comes around the corner and into the bullpen to notice everyone's cold stares at each other. "What happened out here?"

"Somebody's taken the earrings." Charles sighs from his desk.

"Oh, okay, then I don't care." Jake says, returning back to his desk whilst shrugging his shoulders.

Rosa leans back in her chair. "I bet it was Holt." She blurts out to the bullpen.

"What makes you think that?" Amy asks, raising her eyebrows across the room.

"Isn't it obvious? He stays in his office all night and just when he comes out, the lights go off. When they come back on, the earrings are gone and then he's staying in his office again. I'm thinking he's only staying in there to protect what he's hiding." Rosa defends her point, crossing her arms over her chest.

"What about Hitchcock and Scully? We haven't seen them all night, maybe they're behind this?" Terry reasons.

"They're asleep in the evidence room, there is no way they've managed to steal the earrings without any of us noticing." Charles mentions.

"Yeah, but they were sneaky last year, maybe they're trying to sneak it past us again."

The entire room goes quiet as everyone looks to each other. Suddenly, everyone but Jake gets up from their desks before speed walking toward the evidence room.

Holt's door opens a few seconds after the combustion of all the officers leaving the bullpen. "Peralta, what was all that about?" The captain asks across the room to the detective.

Jake shrugs his shoulders whilst looking through one of the arrest reports he had been given. "It's heist related, so I'm not interested." He says.

The detective doesn't have to look up to know that Holt was quickly wandering around, looking for all the other officers, so he continues with what he was doing without a problem.

* * *

"How are they still asleep?" Terry wonders, looking with raised eyebrows at the sleeping detectives at the other side of the evidence room.

"Are we sure they're still alive?" Amy asks.

Charles immediately turns to Rosa beside him. "What did you do?"

"Why is it that on the subject of a possible murder does every one point the blame on me?" Rosa questions, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Because you're terrifying." Terry blatantly responds, filling in the blanks for the female detective.

Rosa hints a smile to the sergeant before turning her attention to the old detectives.

"Well, I guess we can rule out Hitchcock and Scully then." Charles sighs, beginning to walk the other way and back to the bullpen.

"Maybe Rosa is right. Maybe Holt's taken the earrings." Terry says.

Amy jumps to another conclusion. "But what if they're not actually asleep. What if they're pulling our leg to make us believe they're still asleep so they can win over the heist again. They're sneaky, keep that in mind."

Rosa pushes forward. "Hey, there's brownies in the break room!" She yells loud enough to startle the two detectives awake.

"Free brownies, where?" Scully asks, looking up at the group of officers with a smile on his face.

Rosa puts her hand against the doorframe to stop the two of them from leaving. "Before you do, do you guys have the earrings?"

"What earrings?" Hitchcock asks.

Rosa puts her arm back down to the side and turns back to the squad. "Yeah, they don't have the earrings."

Hitchcock and Scully happily walk off toward the break room before Rosa stops them.

"Oh, by the way, there aren't any brownies." She calls after them.

The two detectives look genuinely hurt by what Rosa had just told them. "Bully!" Scully yells back to her before they both storm back to the bullpen.

* * *

 

The briefing room began filling up from the detectives as it drew nearer and nearer midnight. It was eleven fifty-eight and the heist was drawing to a close.

Holt stands by the podium, looking out to the detectives and two sergeants sitting at the tables in the room. "May I say that this years heist was a little slow at the start, but I do believe it was successful," he says with his same monotone voice as usual. "Now, whoever possesses the prize, will you please come up and announce your glory."

Everyone in the room stays completely still, looking up at Holt.

"Why is everyone staring at me?" Holt wonders.

"You don't have the earrings?" Rosa asks.

Holt shakes his head. "I did but then they disappeared from my office."

"Well, I don't have them." Terry shrugs his shoulders, looking around the room.

"Neither do I." Amy adds.

"Me neither." Rosa and Charles both say one after the other.

Holt gazes around in confusion, looking to all the officers in the room. "Well, who does?"

A voice makes the entire room look over to the doorway. "Looking for these?" They ask, extending their arm and showing off the small box, which they then open, exposing the earrings.

The entire room looks at each other before back at the winner, mouths dropped agape. "What is happening? How did you pull that off?" Charles asks, eyebrows high.

"Well, it was quite easy if I do say so myself." Jake says, taking his stand by the podium at the top of the room before smiling at the group of cops before him. "It all started about four hours ago, when I went into the evidence room for one of my cases to find Hitchcock and Scully still deep asleep and mumbling. That's when I overheard that Amy had made you guys go easy on me, so that's when I decided to quit the heist this year."

"But you didn't quit did you?" Charles wonders, smiling at the detective in front of him.

Jake shakes his head. "I had also known about Amy's plans for you guys to go easy on me since last week when I heard her talking to Rosa about it, it was just my amazing acting that convinced you I had just found out."

"It was amazing." Charles says happily to his friend.

"You could do so much better." Rosa crosses her arms over her chest. "So how'd you pull it off?" She wonders.

"Very glad you asked." Jake says with a smile. "You know when the power went out?"

The entire room nods. "You did that to steal the earrings?" Charles blurts out.

"Actually no, I wasn't behind that, captain Holt was. But after that, I caught glimpse of the difference in size of one of the folders on your shelf behind your desk that are beautifully organized to the gay pride flag. I knew then and there that you had stolen the earrings."

"That would be fair to assume that, yes." Holt nods.

"Then you guys all ran toward the evidence room, making Holt leave his office and join you, giving me the perfect opportunity to jump through and steal the earrings."

"But how'd you know Hitchcock and Scully were gonna fall sleep in the evidence room for so long to get us there?" Terry questions.

"I knew because I told them to. I promised them bagels from the cart down the street if they stayed in the room all night, or at least long enough to get the entire of you to freak out and run to the evidence room."

"Is that it?" Holt wonders, making Jake nod. "Well, done."

"Are we going to Shaw's?" Jake asks, looking out to the squad. "I do believe you guys need to say one more thing." He says with a bright smile.

* * *

"Jake Peralta is an amazing human-slash-genius!" Holt, Terry, Rosa, Charles, Hitchcock and Scully cheer in unison, smiling at the detective sat in front of them, beaming happily.

"That sound awesome! it's great to hear you guys say that again." Jake smiles, seen as it had been seven years since the first heist back in 2013, when Jake had won the last time.

"You played us well today, Peralta, we truly did believe you were mad at the squad and I tonight." Holt speaks, lowering his drink in his hand.

"Oh, no, I'm still pissed at you for going easy on me, but I'm open to letting it slide seen as I shoved it in your face - again!"

Terry cuts in. "Speaking of, you've had the same winner twice now, are you gonna stop the heists?"

Holt and Jake look to each other quickly before turning back to the sergeant.

"Nah." Jake responds, breaking out in a smile again.

"The time would go to waste, Terry. And anyway, I started planning next years heist weeks ago."

Jake rolls his eyes at Holt's comment before the squad breaks off in different directions. Jake jumps from his seat at the bar and follows Amy. He stops her in her tracks and spins her around to face him. She glares at him angrily, making Jake regret the decision for a brief moment.

Instead of chickening out and walking away, he clears his throat. "Look, I'm sorry for what I said earlier. It wasn't true."

"And what bit are you referring to?" She wonders, crossing her arms across her chest.

"All of it. I take it all back. But especially the bit where I said the heist was the only thing I could look forward to. Truth be told, the heist doesn't even crack the top ten, and I was just being a jerk. I was mad that you guys were going easy on me and that made me feel vulnerable and I took it out on you - which isn't something a good husband does, it's something a crappy husband does." Jake sighs, making Amy raise her eyebrows to him. "And I still want you to know the thing I'm most looking forward to is starting the next chapter in our lives - just me, you, and baby... and most probably Charles at some moments." He says, moving his hand to Amy's flat stomach.

Amy sighs and breaks out with a smile. "Damn, I can't be mad at a sweet talker."

He reaches for his back pocket. Now, close your eyes and put out your hand, I've got you a little surprise."

Amy tilts her head, looking to him with her eyebrows raised. "Jake, after that apology, I don't think the smartest idea would be to pull a prank."

Jake smiles and shakes his head. "Just to it." He instructs.

Amy reluctantly puts her hand out and closes her eyes. After a moment, she feels her husband place a small box in her palm. She hesitantly opens her eyes before slowly opening the box. Inside was the earring the squad had been trying to gain ownership of all night.

"Holt told me I could keep them, but I don't really feel like getting my ears pierced - again anyway. So I'm giving them to you."

Amy looks up to meet his eyes, her own glistening with tears. She wipes them clean, pulling Jake into her embrace. "Love them, thank you."

"So, those are happy tears?" Jake asks, whispering in her ear.

She pushes him away and smiles, shaking her head. "No, pregnancy hormones."

"Are we starting this already?" He teases.

Amy glares at him before loosening her stare to a smile. "I'm gonna go wait in the care before you can mock me any more. You coming?"

Jake nods. "Yeah, I'll be right there."

He watches Amy leave the bar, a smile permanent on his face. He turns around to say goodnight to the squad, running his hands through his hair to stretch his arms as they were beginning to feel tired. The smile on his face stiffens though and he swears his hearts stops momentarily as he feels the hair at the back of his head loosen in between his fingers, basically sliding off the back of his head. He feels his feet root to the ground below his as the world begins spinning around him.

"Jake?" Rosa's voice stops everything, bringing the detective back to reality. "You okay?"

Jake nods slightly. "Yeah," he hesitates for a moment before pointing to the door. "Ames and I are heading off, it's getting late."

Rosa looks to him and nods once. "Okay, see you tomorrow?"

Jake points to the other detective. "You know it. Bye!" He shouts loudly before storming out of the bar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, not sorry! :)


	7. Episode 7 - Childish Marriage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize this took so long, it just didn't seem full enough but I couldn't find anything else to fit in the chapter, so I left it at my original plan...

_**Synopsis:** Jake and Amy live up to their reputation of making everything into a childish bet when they create one on what they think Baby Santiago-Peralta will be; Interviewing a victim of a B&E takes a dangerous turn; Jake asks Gina for _a favour _; Rosa asks for Charles's help with her wedding._

_**Genre:** Comedy_

* * *

A few seconds after the knock at the door rang through the quiet apartment, Jake jumps up from his seat on the couch (he had been sat there for an hour or so as he couldn't sleep) and opened the door. He gave a quick smile to Gina in front of him.

"Okay, you didn't answer me when you called at two o'clock this morning, why did you need me over here and why did I need to bring my hair stuff?" The civilian raised her eyebrows, lifting up the bag she had in her hand.

Jake doesn't respond but instead grabs the bag and goes over to the kitchen, where he proceeds to dig through it.

"Jake, what the hell are you doing?" Gina wonders, closing the apartment door behind her before going over to him.

The detective shushes her quiet. "Amy's still asleep." He tells her, still digging around in the bag.

"That doesn't answer my question." She folds her arms across her chest. "Did you just want to dig around that bag, because you could have done that at midday and not seven o'clock in the morning, why am I here?"

Jake stops as he sees what he was looking for. He pulls it out of the bag and shows it off to the civilian, who raises her eyebrows.

"Yeah, what do you want with that?" She questions. After a second, she cuts him off from responding as she realizes. "Oh... already?"

Jake sighs. "I noticed last night. I hoped it was a one-time thing, but when I got up in the middle of the night, I saw that it was really happening."

"Are you sure you want me to do that and not a professional? The last time didn't go very well." Gina reasons.

"I know, I've still got a scar behind my ear because of that."

"If it helps, that was when I realized I did not want to be a hairdresser."

"That was also when I learned that if you cut your head open, there is a lot of blood," Jake mentions before handing Gina the electric razor, "but yes, I'm certain I want you to do it."

She smiles to him. "Okay then, let's do this."

Jake points to the closed bedroom door directly across the hall. "We'll have to do it in the bathroom otherwise Amy will kill us, but we have to be quiet because she didn't sleep much last night."

"So, being quiet with an electric razor... that sounds kinda impossible."

"We'll just have to try." He says quickly before leading the civilian toward the bathroom.

Gina shuts the door behind her before grabbing the stool and a towel from the rack in the corner of the room. "Okay, so this is a major thing here, Jake, are you sure you want me to do it?"

Jake nods, sitting on the stool in front of his childhood friend. "I'm sure, now can we get this over with?"

The civilian nods and drapes the towel over the detective's shoulders. She puts the razor to his forehead and pulls it through his hair until she reaches the back of his neck before she pulled the tool away and stares blankly at the newly-buzzed line in her friends hair. "No pressure," she laughs nervously, "but you can't go back now."

Jake doesn't respond but instead sits up straighter on the stool as Gina continues with the razor.

Ten or so minutes later, the door begins to open. "Jake, what are you-" Amy begins as she peers her head around the door before letting out a surprised squeal.

Jake jumps up from the seat and leaps over the few step gap between them both, putting his hands on her shoulders. "Ames, I'm so sorry, it's just I noticed that my hair was starting to fall out in the bar last night."

Amy weakly smiles at him. "So that's why you were acting so weird last night."

Jake only hums and hangs his head down slightly. After a moment of silence between the pair, he looks back to meet her gaze. "Sorry that I scared you."

"It's okay. I mean, I definitely didn't think last night that when I woke up and I'd hear buzzing from the bathroom that was you shaving your hair off, but then again, you are unpredictable." She says with a subtle laugh at his half-shaven head. "But I am so proud of you. I know this was going to be one of the harder side effects of the chemotherapy on you because I know how much pride you take on your hair. Plus, it added like an inch or so more to your height."

"Hey! My height is above average." He defends.

"Yeah, from about eighty-years-ago." Amy adds, making Jake grump. She can't help but smile at his stubbornness. "C'mon, how about we let Gina finish what she's already started so you don't look weird."

Jake nods slowly and sits back down in the bar stool, allowing the civilian to continue. Amy sits on the edge of the bath and grabs his hand on hers, giving him a reassuring smile.

Another ten minutes later, Gina was packing up her stuff, getting ready to leave the apartment.

Amy says goodbye at the door. "Thanks for what you did, Gina, and I'm sorry that Jake called you really early this morning."

Gina shakes her head. "Meh, I was up anyway." She shrugs her shoulders.

"Well, thank you again." Amy says.

Jake then appears from the bedroom and goes over to the front door. He smiles widely to his childhood friend. "Thanks, Gina."

Amy widens her eyes at the beanie on her husband's head. "Where did you find that?"

"At the back of the closet, why?" Jake wonders.

The sergeant shakes her head and pushes it away. "Not important."

* * *

Rosa approaches Charles's desk and sits on the chair without speaking a word to the male detective.

He looks from his computer to her with a smile. "Hey, Rosa."

She looks to him and nods. "Hi." She slightly grimaces at the pleasant tone in her voice. "Can I ask you to do something?" She asks after a moment of silence.

Charles widens his eyes with interest. He shifts forward in his seat. "Of course, what do you need?"

Rosa sighs deeply before looking the male detective. "You know that food you brought in last week?"

He smiles, remembering vividly. "Oh, yes, that was the best Hainanese chicken rice I have ever made."

"Well, Alicia seemed to like it when she came in, and she was wondering if maybe you'd be able to make some more for the wedding."

Charles beams widely. "I'd be honored."

The female detective nods subtly. "Great, would you be able to cater the entire ceremony?"

He seems to be taken aback by this for a moment before his smile grows even wider - if that was possible anymore. "Rosa, I can't wait to cater, I am so excited!"

The female detective smiles before standing up from the chair she was sat on beside Charles's desk and walking over to her own.

* * *

"Hey, Peralta," Terry calls across the bullpen from his desk, gaining the detective's attention, "your B&E victim is here."

Jake smiles from across the room before going over to the woman standing by the sergeants desk and introducing himself before pointing her to his desk.

He sits beside her, looking around his desk for the file he had been given that morning on the case. Once he thinks he's found it, he reads it out just to be sure. "Okay, correct me if I'm wrong: you were out of the apartment when the perp broke in, they took a laptop, $112 and the safe it was enclosed in?"

The victim merely nods in response. Instead, she completely changes the subject. "Have you had lunch today?" She wonders.

Jake furrows his eyebrows. "I'm really flattered, but I'm married."

She shakes her head. "I'm not asking you out, I'm just curious."

A moment passes before Jake slowly nods. "Then, no, I'm going in about ten minutes with my wife."

"Is that why you've got the hat on your head?" The victim questions.

Jake sits up in his seat. "That's not really related to the case, can we get back to that?"

"I'm sorry, it's just kind of distracting. I mean, you're not going out for a while, why do you need it on now?" She sighs.

"It's not something you need to worry about."

"It's not cold in here, though, it's actually quite warm."

The detective put the file down on his desk and stares at the victim intently. "Can we please get on to the case?"

She shrugs her shoulders. "Fine." She huffs.

Jake thanks her before picking the file back up again and beginning to look through it again. Before he can asks another question regarding the case, the victim is beating him to it.

"Is there some need for you to wear it?"

He throws the file down on his desk this time, it hitting the monitor before landing on the keyboard. "You really want to know?" He wonders, raising his voice slightly. The victim only nods. "I'm wearing the hat because I'm on chemotherapy, okay?"

She fumbles in her seat, nodding again, looking to the floor.

Jake goes to pick up the file again before Charles calls him over to his desk.

"Boyle, I'm working on something." The younger detective huffs, looking through the case file.

"Please, Jake, this will only take three seconds."

Jake sighs and stands from his desk. "I'm holding you to that." He says before sitting in the chair beside the detective's desk. "What?"

Boyle refuses eye contact with his friend and instead looks directly behind him. He shushes Jake quiet when he tries to ask what he was doing.

A second of his friend staring intensely over his shoulder later, he's asking again. "Charles, what are you doing?" He whispers.

"I'm seeing what the victim of your B&E case did when you weren't there."

Jake raises his eyebrows. "Why?"

"I saw the look she gave you when she found out you were on chemo."

"She didn't give me a look." Jake denies.

Charles sighs. "Well she had a look." He mentions before shushing his friend from saying anything else as he noticed the victim lean forward in the chair toward Terry.

She began to speak across the room, the two detective's sat at Charles's desk barely unable to make out what she was saying.

 _"Excuse me, are you a detective here?"_ She asks quietly, making it even harder to hear what she was saying, but luckily the bullpen had become a little quieter in their favor.

They see Terry nod his head. _"I'm a sergeant, but yes."_

The victim's face lights up. _"Sergeant's have say over which case goes to who, right?"_

 _"In a way,"_ Terry says slowly with a subtle nod.

_"That's fantastic, would you be able to swap my detective?"_

Terry raises his eyebrows. _"Look, I promise Peralta is never like that, he just got agitated. He's the best detective here, trust me."_

Jake can't help but smile slightly as the sergeant compliments his work from across the room.

_"No, it's not that, it's just I'm seeing my family this weekend because my cousin's just had a baby, and I don't wanna get sick because the baby hasn't got all of his shots yet."_

_"Peralta isn't sick."_ Terry mentions.

_"He's on chemo, I can't risk giving the baby cancer, he's still so small."_

Terry sighs. _"I can assure you, he's not contagious."_

The victim huffs. _"I've read studies that disprove that."_

Across the room, Jake has to stop Charles from leaping up in his seat. "Boyle, don't, it's fine."

The older detective lets out a slight groan of disproval. "She can't say that though."

Jake looks him in the eye. "I said it's fine."

They turn their attention back to Terry, who simultaneously gives them both a look from his desk across the bullpen. Just then, the elevator doors ping open.

Amy smiles over to Jake, making him return the look back to her before glancing back to Charles for a moment. After a second goes by, his eyes go wide and he's jumped up from the chair beside Charles's desk running over to the elevator to stop her entering the bullpen.

"Hey, why don't I grab my jacket and we can go? You stay here." He asks, slowly retreating into the bullpen backwards.

"Whoa, we can go in a second, I need to talk to Terry quickly." Amy mentions.

Another idea hits past him for an excuse for his wife not to enter the bullpen, as the victim of the B&E is still rambling on how she wanted a new detective on her case. "Why don't I bring Terry here?" He wonders.

"Jake." She returns sharply before walking past him into the bullpen.

Amy goes over to the sergeant's desk and stands there. "I can see you're doing something, Terry, but can I have a moment when you're free?"

Terry stands up from his desk. "I'm free right now."

Before the male sergeant can pull Amy to the side to talk to her, the victim gets there first.

"Do you work here?" She asks.

Amy furrows her eyebrows. "Yes." She hesitatingly replied.

"Great, this man here is refusing me to have a new detective on my case even though it is at my request." The victim complained.

"Her request was not applicable." Terry cuts in.

Amy looks from the tall sergeant on one side to the victim on the other side of her. "What was the request?"

Jake comes up behind Amy, making the victim take a step back. "Ames, please, let's go."

She turns her head slightly, looking to her eager husband. "Just a minute."

"Oh, but this will take longer than that." Jake mumbles loudly.

"What was the request?" Amy repeats.

Jake cuts in quickly, looking to Terry. "Don't say it."

Terry ignores the detective and takes a deep breath. "She was requesting a new detective because she's worried that she'll get sick by being around Jake."

Amy turns her attention solely to the victim. "What?!"

Jake looks up from the floor and to the male sergeant. "I told you not to say it." He quickly cuts in.

"Jake's not contagious." Amy sighs.

"I've read studies that say he is."

"Studies from where? Mendacious University?" She crosses her arms over her chest, staring at the victim intently. "My husband is not contagious in the slightest. It's not like being in the same room as him is going to give you cancer."

"Ames, please, just leave it. I don't care, if she wants to change detective, she can change detective."

The victim smiles happily before looking to Terry. "See, even he is giving me the okay to change detectives."

"I don't care, you can't." Amy glares at her.

"Santiago, what are you doing?" Terry wonders.

"I'm standing up for Jake. He's not contagious, so yes Terry, you were right, her reason isn't applicable." The female sergeant mentions.

The victim stands up straighter. "Oh, this is ridiculous. All I want is to change detectives."

"And your reason is denied. So you're going to have to stick with detective Peralta and you're going to have to live with it."

Things quickly escalate when the victim pulls out a small knife from her pocket. "I don't know about you, but I always get my way."

Jake and Terry, along with Charles and Rosa across the room, grab their guns from their holsters. Jake pushes in front of Amy and insists she steps further back.

"This is ridiculous, you know. This won't help you get your way, threatening a cop can get you arrested." Terry mentions.

The victim shrugs her shoulders. "I don't care. Arrest me if you want, whatever it takes to get my request across." She protrudes the knife further.

"Fine, drop the knife and we'll arrest you, that will get the message through." Jake slowly takes a step forward.

She takes a step toward him. "One more step and you'll regret it." She threatens.

"C'mon, this is silly now, just put it down, you wouldn't really attack a cop, would you?" The detective takes another subtle step forward.

The victim hesitated for a moment before dropping the knife on the floor. A second later, she snatches the gun from the detective's hands and points it directly to him.

"Step back, now!" She raises her voice to an almost yelling tone.

Jake slowly raises his hands but doesn't move.

"Look, if you put down the gun, nothing bad will happen." Terry reasons.

Just then, the elevator doors ping open behind them, off stepping Captain Holt - who had been in a meeting with One Police Plaza for the past two hours.

"Who's that?" The victim asks quietly and before anyone could answer, she's yelling across the bullpen. "Who are you?!"

Holt walks slowly toward the detective and two sergeants by Jake's desk. "I'm Holt, the captain of the precinct."

"What does the captain do?" She asks.

"He's the boss." Jake replies quickly.

She lowers the weapon down to her side. "So you can make the decisions around here?"

Holt slowly nods, keeping a verbal response to himself.

"Can you sort out my problem?" The victim questions, raising her eyebrows slightly.

"If you drop the weapon, I'm sure we'll be able to come to an agreement."

She glares around to the people around her, all with their guns drawn toward her. She sighs and slowly puts the gun down on the desk beside her.

Holt praises her, inviting her toward him. She goes over quickly before standing in utter silence. "Okay, Sergeant Jeffords is going to put you in the holding cell for a little while, and then we are going to talk about what you want."

The victim nods, walking into the holding cell with ease.

By the desk, Jake takes his gun from the wood and put it back in his holster. As he looks back up, Amy quickly hugs him as tightly as she could.

"Are you okay?" She asks.

Jake nods. "I'm fine." He responds. He wraps his partly shaking hands around his wife's waist. He kept his eyes open - shutting them just made him see the barrel again, right in front of him. "I'm fine."

* * *

Rosa enters the break room to grab her second coffee of that day. She goes straight over to the machine, not even realizing that Charles was sat at the table with paper scattered in front of him.

While pouring the cup, she turns and the sound of her name.

"Rosa, what was your plan for the menu?" He asks and before she can even think of responding, he's filling her in with the different ideas he's had. "Now I could do the classic three-course meal or I could do a spin with a five-course meal. Now the portions would be smaller with the five-course, but it's not used as much as the three-course. What do you think?"

Rosa merely shrugs her shoulders. "What is the real difference?"

"Well for starters the five-course is two more courses than the three-course. And secondly, with the five-course, the portions would be slightly smaller so everyone can finish all the meals, and the three-course would have larger portion sizes, but there's not nearly enough courses to expand to all the ideas I have."

"Well, how many ideas do you have?" Rosa wonders before taking a sip of her coffee, feeling the exhaustion from last night's overtime lift off her shoulders.

Charles glances to the table before looking back up to his colleague. "Over about three-hundred separate ideas." He says quickly. "Do you think that's enough?"

Rosa can't help her eyes widen. "Charles, no one has time for over three-hundred different meals, narrow it down to three or five."

"Now we're back to my problem I asked you about. I was trying to narrow it down but I couldn't pick between doing a three-course or a five-course."

Rosa stares blankly at the male detective. "I'm really not the one to be talking to about that. Why don't you ask Jake or someone, he'd help you."

Charles sighs. "I already did, and his words were 'why are you asking me, ask Rosa, she's the one your doing this for'."

The female detective pauses for a moment. "I'm not gonna be the best with this, Boyle. Truth be told, I only asked you because we couldn't find anyone else for the date and Alicia liked what you brought in last week. Why don't you cook that again? Problem solved." She says before walking back toward her desk.

* * *

Jake enters the bedroom and smiles over to Amy, who was finishing something up on her phone. "Hey, what you doing?"

"Just seeing the picture my mom sent me."Amy replies, looking up from the screen subtly.

A second later, he joins her in the mattress. "What did she send you?" He wonders.

Amy looks up to meet his eyes. "She's sent a sketch of her next knitting project."

Jake gets under the sheet and turns to switch off his light. "Let me guess, it's for David?"

Amy can't help the minor shudder pass through her before she lights up again. "No, she's doing one for the baby and one for you."

Jake turns to his wife with widened eyes. "What?"

She flips the phone around so he can see the sketch her mother had put on the Santiago family group chat a few moments beforehand.

He squints his eyes to the screen as it was hard to see it without his contacts in. There he saw a faint sketch of two hats, one much smaller than the first one. He looks back up to his wife and furrows his eyebrows. "What's that?"

"My mom's going to knit you a hat so you're not stuck with this horrible greeny-blue one that you found in the back of the closet, and she's making an identical one but much smaller for the baby. You two will have matching hats." She beams to him.

"Well, is she going to add a little bobble to the baby's hat, because I don't think she'd suit a beanie... not that I'm saying girls can't wear beanies."

Amy rolls her eyes, smiling at his stumble. "She won't need to worry about that because the baby's a boy."

"I bet you ten bucks the baby's a girl."

Amy shakes her head. "Twenty bucks the baby's a boy."

Jake sits up against the headboard. "Thirty bucks-"

She cuts him off. "Why are we going higher? It would most probably go in the joint account anyway."

A second goes by before Jake breaks the slight silence. "Twenty bucks it's a girl."

"Done." Amy says with a wide smile. "I come from a long line of first-born boys, or did you forget I have seven brothers?"

"I did not forget you have seven brothers, they all scare me slightly... especially Tony." He says quickly before letting out a small chuckle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it just me, or does every wedding I go to have a three-course meal?
> 
> (Also, tell me what you think Baby Santiago-Peralta will be in the comments? Boy or girl?)


	8. Episode 8 - Turkey Day Surprise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long - I'd try and explain it but 1) it would take too long and 2) you might not believe me :) Special thanks to my amazing friends "Mike", "Tony" and "Rab" for helping me with my writer's block, you're amazing and I don't know what I'd do without you guys! <3

_**Synopsis:** Conflict arises between Jake and Victor over Thanksgiving. Jake receives an unexpected guest._   
_**Genre:** Comedy_

* * *

The elevator door pinged, making everyone look to the opposite side of the bullpen. As Charles came off of the elevator, everyone rolled their eyes at his over-used turkey costume and returned to what they were doing.

"Happy Turkey Day!" Charles yelled out before doing his common "gobble, gobble" to everyone's dismay. "C'mon, what's got everyone in a grumpy mood?"

Terry stared over to Charles from his desk. "I think dressing up like a turkey is getting old, Boyle, you do it every year."

"Yeah, Gina texted ten minutes ago asking if you had quote-unquote 'trashed the holiday with his terrible costume yet?'." Rosa sighed loudly from the other side of the room.

"How have you worn the same costume every year for almost a decade?" Amy questions, raising her eyebrows to the detective who was still standing over by the elevator.

"Actually, this is my second costume because my one a few years back had its tail ripped off by the elevator." Charles sighs.

Jake pipes in. "I'm surprised you can still stand there without having some sort of PTSD."

Charles nods. "It is taking some courage to stay here."

As everyone rolls their eyes again, the detective huffs. "You guys can disagree all you want, this costume is in style and is hilarious. You all laughed when I came in wearing it for the first time."

"Yeah, that was nine years ago, it's not funny anymore, nobody likes it."

Just then, the elevator doors open again. Charles moves to the side to allow Holt to make his way through. Other than from walking to his office, however, Holt stood next to the detective, staring at him blankly. After a second, Holt broke out with a wide smile. "Oh my, Boyle, where did you get that costume? It is hilarious." He says before laughing hysterically.

"See! I told you is still in style!" Charles cheers out loudly.

* * *

Amy peered her head around the bedroom door to see her husband fixing the beanie on his head in the mirror. She smiles before grasping his attention away from overly-fixating on what the hat looked like. "Jake, as much as I love you, I don't think you need to spend as much time with your hat as you are."

He turns to face her with a concerned smile. "I know, but I also know how judgemental you dad can be. If the hat's not straight, who knows what kind of subtle insults he will throw in my direction."

She walks through the bedroom and stops by his side before making him face her directly. "Look, I know you and my dad have had a rocky relationship but I promise that he won't be making subtle insults about your hat." Amy says with a smile before snaking her arms up and straightening out the beanie on one side it was slightly tilted. "I promise, you look great, there is nothing my dad can insult you about."

It takes him less than a second before he responds with another possible reason for an insult from his father-in-law. "What about the baby?"

Amy thinks for a moment before nodding. "Yes, while my dad is happy about having another grandchild, he's not one-hundred percent stoked that it's with you," she sighs, "but his opinion doesn't matter because you're perfect."

Jake awes. "Love you, too."

The sergeant stands on her toes for a second as she plants a chaste kiss to her husband's cheek. "Oh, by the way, my parents are on their way now, they'll be here in twenty minutes."

"Great," he mumbles under his breath, "my mom will be here soon, not really sure on when though."

"I really hope they get along this time, the last Thanksgiving we had with them together didn't go well." Amy sighs.

The detective nods. "I remember."

* * *

Maybe a second after the door rang, Amy jumped from the couch and went over. She opened it and smiled widely to her parents on the other side before hugging them.

"Hi, mom. Hi, dad," she says with a grin, "It's great to see you again."

Jake goes over to the door and greets his in-law's. "Mister and Misses Santiago, pleasure again."

Camila hesitates for second before sighing. "Oh, Jacob, how are you doing?"

The detective nods briefly. "I have off moments, but other than that I'm okay."

Victor smiles slightly and changes the subject. "I like the hat, Jacob, where did you get it? The sidewalk?" He wonders.

"Dad!" "Victor!" Amy and Camila both scold him simultaneously.

Victor raises his hands up in protest. "What? I'm just joking, he knows that I'm just joking."

Jake hesitates for a moment before forcefully making himself laugh.

Amy rolls her eyes subtly before leading her parents to the living room. She then goes back to the kitchen, Jake following her through.

"See?" He wonders quietly once he's out of earshot to his parents-in-law. He waits a moment before adding, "Is the hat really that bad?"

"I mean, you did find it in the back of the closet." Amy smiles, half-looking at Jake and half-preparing drinks for her parents.

"I know, it's just..." He pauses to think of something else to say. After a beat, he can't find anything, so he stumbles. "Shut up."

* * *

"Hey, Jake, do you want anything to drink?" Amy wonders, entering the living room after just having checked how the dinner was going - she wasn't cooking, Jake was, but she still felt the need to check.

Jake looks up from the coffee table and thinks for a second. "Urm, yeah," he pauses for a moment as if thinking about what he would prefer, "solo un poco de agua, por favor?" He asks.

Amy stares with wide eyes, and the room goes quiet.

Jake looks around the room in confusion. "You all are looking at me like I just murdered someone." He mentions briefly, continuing to look around the room.

"When did you learn Spanish?" Amy wonders.

"I learned it like two years ago, but it's been so long, I'm rusty on parts." Jake sighs.

Victor interjects. "Claramente." He whispers into Camila.

Jake lets out a forced laugh, turning to his father-in-law. "Funny story, I do actually remember what that one means," he says before looking up at Amy, "Did I say it wrong or something?"

Amy shakes her head. "I'll go grab you the water." She vowed, walking back toward the kitchen.

The living room remains in silence for a few deafening beats. Jake is just about to sink into the couch subtly when there was a knock at the door. He jumps up. "I'll get it!" He insists, already half way to the door.

He swings it open, expecting to greet his mom with a hug, but he's somehow grounded to the spot when he sees who is actually standing there.

"Hey, buddy," the man greets Jake with a smile.

Jake stares in shock for a moment before letting his voice out. "Dad? What are you doing here?"

Roger continues to smile at his son. "I wanted to surprise you."

A few beats of silence passes, without a word from the detective. What feels like an eternity later, he asks, "Can I speak to you outside real quick?"

The older man agrees and backs away from the door, allowing Jake to leave the apartment and shut the door behind him.

When he's made sure that Amy wasn't going to follow him out of the apartment, Jake puts his hands on his hips and stares at Roger. He forcefully laughs as he tries to understand what was going on. "What the fuck? Mom said you had flights blocking any chance to get here until like, April."

Roger nods along. "I know, but this storm came in from the west and it suspended my flights for the next three days, so I begged one of my buddies so I could take his flight to New York yesterday so I could see you."

"Did you actually beg your friend or did you blackmail him?" Jake wonders.

"Who cares if I blackmailed the guy? Once I said you were on chemotherapy he became reasonable." Roger sighs.

Jake goes to say another thing, but chooses not to. Instead, he brings up another conversation. "Where's mom?" He questions.

"Oh, she's just coming up, she just had to answer her phone." Roger replies.

"You didn't stay with her?" Jake inquires.

Roger looks at his son with slightly wide eyes. "Was I supposed to?"

Jake can't help but roll his eyes as he heads back into the apartment, ushering his dad in front of him.

As the door opens, he hears Victor's conversation with Camila and Amy from the living room.

"Oh, hija, but that man was terrific for you. You both had so much in common. Jacob is a man-child and you know it." Victor sighs toward his daughter.

Amy exhales. "Dad, I know Jake can be immature at times, but I swear he is getting so much better, especially since he got his cancer diagnosis, just give him a chance, please."

Camila gives her husband sat beside her a glare but doesn't say anything.

Victor hesitates for a moment while thinking of his response. A moment later, he lets out a subtle shake of his head. "I'm sorry, but I gave him a chance years ago. I don't think he will ever change, so my opinion on him most definitely won't," he says - his voice is on the verge of attempting to be quiet, but yet he's still loud enough to be heard from the front door to the apartment, "He's not good enough for you, Amy. In my eyes, he never will be."

"Dad-" Amy attempts to cut in before Victor stops her.

He puts his hand out to quiet his daughter. "¡Es suficiente! No me interesa. Ese hombre no es lo suficientemente bueno para ti, y lo sabes! No me escuchaste hace tres años, Te dije que Jacob no era lo suficientemente bueno para ti."

Jake then clears his throat from by the door making Camila, Victor and Amy all turn their heads to look over.

"Oh my god, Jake, how long have you been standing there?" Amy wonders, standing up from the couch and slowly walking over to him.

"Long enough." He vaguely replies, looking down at a spot on the floor five feet in front of him.

"How much of that did you hear?" Amy questions, putting her hands on her husband's shoulders before running them down his arms.

It takes him longer to respond as he continues to stare down at the floor. After a quiet minute, he puts his voice back out into the room. "Enough."

The room goes quiet again, this time the silence is deafening. You could hear a pin drop on a kitchen tile from the front door as everyone in the apartment waited for somebody else to say something.

Jake swallows the small lump in his throat before speaking up, breaking the on-going silence. "You know what, Victor? That's a relief that you think that actually," he breathes out before inhaling sharply, "I've spent the last four years trying to win you over; trying to gain your approval; and it's a little bit annoying to know that it was all put to waste, but then there's also this huge sigh of relief to know I don't have to try again. I'm glad I don't have to try again because if I'm being honest, I was starting to get a little fucking tired of doing it because I knew it would be put to shit anyway. So thank you." He says before leaving the living room, going toward the bedroom with a quiet slam of the door behind him.

* * *

Amy entered the bedroom slowly and quietly to check up on Jake - who had come in here half an hour earlier. When she peers around the door, she sees her husband lying on his side of the bed, facing away from the door. She wasn't sure if he had fallen asleep or if he was just staring out the window, so she calls out his name quietly to check. "Hey, Jake, you doing okay?"

Jake barely hums a response, keeping his voice to himself.

The sergeant sighs, sitting on the bed beside him. She rests her hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry if my dad hurt your feelings, Jake. Believe me or not, but he's only being protective. It's what a father does, they get protective over their daughters."

Jake sits up and stares blankly to his wife for a moment. "So your dad saying all that stuff is just him being protective."

Amy nods. "My dad has threatened a guy before, Jake. He didn't follow through with it, but he threatened them."

The detective is quiet for a moment before he sighs. "If I'm being honest, I would've preferred the threatening."

Amy hides back a laugh but the small smile breaks through. She waits a moment before tilting her head subtly to the side. "Are you coming back in there? Your mom's here now, and I've told my dad to leave you alone." She says with a smile still printed on her lips.

"What's the point in doing that?" Jake wonders, making Amy furrows her eyebrows. He cuts in and continues before Amy can question as to why he said that. "No matter how many times you tell him to leave me alone, he'll still pick on me, so you might as well not bother."

"Jake, I swear, I will be there the whole time and if he says something cruel he'll have me to deal with." Amy says with a wider smile.

A small grin appears on the detective's lips. He waits for a moment - looking down to the sheet of the bed - before meeting Amy's eyes. "Your dad's right, I'm not good enough for you." He says before glancing down again.

Amy reaches her hand forward and grasps her husband's in hers. She stares at him with a smile for a moment, waiting for him to avert his gaze back up to her. Once he does, she speaks. "You may eat gummy worms and you may watch Die Hard every time I leave you alone for more than thirty minutes but you have the biggest heart of anyone I know. Who cares what my dad thinks?"

"Well, your dad cares what he thinks." Jake mentions.

She subtly shows off the silver wedding band on her left hand before pointing out the same one on Jake's. "It's a little late now, isn't it?" Amy wonders with a smile.

A moment passes before Jake nods, smiling to Amy broadly. "Okay, I'll come back in."

* * *

Once the front door was closed, Jake finds himself slumping down immediately on the couch. When he had come back out from he bedroom, it couldn't have been more than two minutes later before the first 'drama' happened - this one between Victor and Roger regarding who they thought would win the football. He hit his head against the back of the couch and sighs deeply. "How many times did they argue?" He wonders, keeping his gaze on the ceiling.

Amy giggles. "I lost count at sixteen." She replies, carrying the stray glasses through to the kitchen. "And hey, don't get comfortable, I've got something to show you."

Jake perks his head up in interest. "Oo, whatcha gonna show me?"

"You're going to need your flannel." Amy instructs him with a smile to see his enthusiasm.

The detective's face drops. "That's in the bedroom and I don't wanna go get it." He sighs.

"If you want to see what I've done you're going to need your flannel because it's on the roof and you're not going up there in a t-shirt in November."

"Fine." He huffs, standing from the couch and shuffling to the bedroom to grab the long-sleeved shirt to go over his shirt - which he had taken off hours ago when he felt like he was standing in the Sahara.

When he goes back through to the living room, he finds it empty - with the front door open. He smiles before following Amy up to the roof.

A minute or so later - and after catching up with Amy - they got on to the roof. There was a blanket on the floor, layed down with a couple of rocks in the corners to keep it from blowing out of place due to the modest wind outside, along with a lamp beside it.

"What is this?" Jake wonders, furrowing his eyebrows and altering his gaze from the blanket and Amy a few times.

"Do you remember when you were a little drunk a few years back and you mentioned how you had never seen a constellation before because we were _definitely_ on that subject at the time."

Jake stammers for a minutes before nodding subtly. "Vaguely, yes."

"Well, it's a clear night tonight so I thought that maybe we could take a look and see." Amy suggests, making a small smile appear on her husband's face.

They lay down on the blanket, Jake wrapping his arm around Amy, allowing her to rest her head on his chest. Amy tries pointing out any possible stars that resembled any alignment, while Jake continues to ask hundreds of questions - it was clear he had never really learned much about astrology. After a good ten minutes, Amy's able to recognize an alignment of a few of the stars. She points her finger, grabbing Jake's attention.

"There's one, the one that looks kinda like a zig-zag," she traces her finger along the pattern to hopefully help Jake see it, "that's Cassiopeia."

Jake furrows his eyebrows. "Never heard of it." He says before looking back up at the pitch-black sky. It was only nine o'clock, but it seemed like midnight. The street at the bottom of the building was dead silent, with the very occasional car driving past - which was strange for Brooklyn.

Amy goes quiet again as she stares up, looking for another one. A few minutes later, she finds one that's she sure Jake might know. "Okay, how about this one?" she wonders, lifting her finger again and pointing it out, tracing along the alignment, "The one with the little triangle, then the L shape, then the little square shape - that's Pisces."

The detective takes a second before he smiles. "Oh, yeah, I see it."

"Really?" Amy wonders.

Jake nods. "Yeah. How cool is that?"

Amy smiles. "It's awesome." She says, resting her head further into her husband's chest.

A silent moment goes by as Jake and Amy both continue to stare up into the sky. As the silence begins to take over Amy, making her begin to drift off against the warmth radiating from her husband, Jake breaks through it.

"I wanna do this in a few years time." He says suddenly.

The sergeant can't help but furrow her eyebrows slightly. "Do what?" She asks.

"This. Stargazing," he mentions, making Amy's heart warm, "but we'll be able to do it with our kid too, show them all the different stars."

Amy smiles. "Yeah, that sounds nice."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not fluent in Spanish - I'm trying to learn, but I've missed so many Duolingo lessons that it's quit reminding me, so I'm sorry if what was spoken in Spanish didn't make any sense or was wrong - I did put it through google translate like 4 times but it's never 100% accurate. 
> 
> I did have another ending planned but I decided not to write it because I've had such a long week with my work experience and I just wanted to get this chapter up because it had been so long. 
> 
> I love you all <3


	9. Episode 9 - Good News or Bad News

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **IMPORTANT!**  
> Okay, so originally this was going to be a Christmas chapter with loads of flashbacks, but I decided to cut it completely from the "season" because it served no purpose in the plot-line and if I'm being honest, it probably would have taken me weeks to decide how I was gonna write it and a month or... five... to decide what the flashbacks would be, and then maybe another month or two to write it and it would be New Years by then, so I decided it would be best to scrap it completely because I was looking forward to writing this one and it serves something major with the plot point :) All the future "episodes" have been moved up a place, for example, "episode" 17 is now "episode" 16 instead, that is also why it is now 22 chapters long instead of 23. I want all the chapters to be somewhat relevant and enjoyable, and I believe that the original chapter 9 wouldn't have been, but I believe this one is. I'm sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused, and enjoy the chapter! :) <3333

_**Synopsis:** Jake goes for a follow-up appointment to see if the chemotherapy is working. The squad goes on a manhunt._

_**Genre:** Angst, Comedy, Hurt/Comfort _

* * *

No matter how hard she had managed to try, Amy still couldn't get Jake to calm down.

She knew why he was nervous, and the fact that he had every right to be anxious, but she couldn't say 'it's going to be okay' anymore - even she was beginning to get tired of hearing herself say it.

Instead of saying the same statement again, she reaches her hand out and puts it against her husband's knee - which makes it stop bouncing immediately - and he looks up to her with concern and worry in his eyes. "Hey, don't worry." She tells him.

He nods slowly a couple of times before shaking his head. "I know, it's stupid, but I can't help it."

"I know," Amy agrees, "but worrying won't change what the results are."

Jake goes to speak up again but instead gets cut off by the doctor walking into the room.

Doctor Hamills gives them both a smile as he sits at the desk before opening the file sat on top of the woodwork. He puts his hands down together on top of the desk and looks directly to Jake. "Okay, so there's good news but there's also bad news."

"Well, what's the good news?" Jake asks, leaning forward in his seat slightly.

The doctor nods. "The good news is that the chemotherapy has restricted the tumor from growing any bigger."

"And the bad news?" Amy edges forward, encouraging the doctor to continue.

Doctor Hamills waits for a moment, pausing slightly before taking in a small sigh. "The chemotherapy has also not shrunken the tumor either, the cancer is still the same size as it was back in October when you got the diagnosis, which means we'd prefer to put you back on another round of chemotherapy in hopes to remove as little of your stomach as possible."

Jake can feel his heart drop as he quickly looks to the floor before back up at doctor Hamills. He nods slowly, trying not to let his face fall too much. "Oh, okay." He sighs quietly.

The doctor looks to Jake and gives him a small reassuring look. "I know this wasn't the news you were hoping for. We'll put you on another eight-round cycle at two-weeks apart, just like your last cycle and we'll check again in April - hopefully then we can start to think about surgery."

"Okay," Jake repeats slowly, still nodding slightly, "Thank you."

* * *

Charles had been watching his friend out of the corner of his eye all day and he noticed that something was... off with him.

Firstly, he was thirty-minutes late to work that morning, and while eight years ago that wouldn't have been a big deal, since Jake and Amy got together, the times that Jake was late was stripped down to the minimal and if he _was_ late, something had to be wrong.

Secondly, since he had arrived to work Jake had been sat at his desk almost the entire time. Sure, he had run off to the men's restroom every once in a while, which back in October and early November last year made everyone in the bullpen a little worried seeing him run off so many times, the squad had grown accustomed to seeing Jake run down the corridor to the bathroom following a chemo session. And given the fact that they all knew Jake had had chemo the day before, they didn't think twice when he got up every once in a while to run to the bathroom.

Thirdly, he looked just straight up sad and had done all day. Charles had noticed it the second his friend stepped off the elevator that morning, but he didn't want to ask if it was just in case he had been up all night. Usually, over the course of the day, Jake's spirits would lift up - but not today.

Charles hesitates for a moment, replaying the words he was going to say in his head over and over. He couldn't wait anymore. It had been four hours since Jake had arrived to work and he had gotten up from his desk three times - one to go to Captain Holt's office and the other two were when he jumped up and ran to the bathroom.

Before he can think of stopping himself, the small detective stands from his desk and goes over to his friend's across the bullpen. He sits in the chair beside Jake's desk and gets his attention.

"Hey, buddy," he says in a calm, quiet voice, making Jake turn his head to him and sit back in his desk chair slightly, "You doing okay? Because I can't help but notice you've been acting a little bit... off today."

Jake nods, turning his dry attention back to his computer, playing around with the keyboard in front of him. "Yeah, I'm fine." He responds.

Charles leans forward slightly, placing his hands against his friend's desk. "Jake-y, I know something's wrong, you're never this quiet." He sighs

The younger detective turns his attention back on his friend quickly. He pauses for a beat, gathering his voice to make sure he didn't snap - he had been on a short fuse with everything and everyone since he arrived, which was another thing that made Charles sure something was bothering his friend. "Boyle, I swear, I'm fine."

Boyle nods before apologizing to Jake. As he goes to stand up from the chair and return to his own desk, Peralta stops him.

Charles slumps back into the chair and furrows his eyebrows. "What's wrong?"

"I don't want to tell you here," Jake sighs, looking around the bullpen at everyone sat at their own desks in various places throughout the room, "Can we go for a walk outside?"

Charles nods and they both stand from their seats before making their way to the elevator.

The ride down to the lobby was quiet, and they walked a block outside the precinct in silence before Charles asked what was bothering him again.

Jake sighs and pauses for a moment before looking at his friend sadly. "I had a follow-up yesterday to do with my chemo."

Boyle stops in his tracks and puts his hands out. "What? Why didn't you say that the other day when I asked why you were gonna be off yesterday?"

"As much as I'd love to answer that, that's not the end of the story." Jake adds, walking ahead of Charles - only to have him catch up after him quickly.

"Oh, sorry, carry on." Charles says, a small smile spreads on his face as he walks side-by-side to his friend again.

Jake looks to the floor for a moment before continuing. "Anyway, they did a test before giving me the final round of chemo in that cycle. After that, they had the results back so they took me and Amy into the office and told me what was going on."

"So, what did they say?" Charles asks.

"They told me that the chemo has stopped the tumor from growing any bigger-"

Charles's face lights up. "That's amazing!"

"-But they also said that it hasn't done anything on shrinking it either so I've got to have another cycle so they don't have to remove such a big area of my stomach when they do the surgery."

Boyle furrows his eyebrows. "So when are you having the surgery?"

Jake shrugs. "I don't know. They said there's a possibility it might be in April, but that depends on how the cancer responds to this cycle of chemo."

"So is that why you've been kinda depressed today?"

Peralta slowly nods. "It's just I was kinda hoping they'd tell me that the cancer had shrunk enough so they'd be able to do the surgery and I'd be fine and I'd be able to help Amy get ready for the baby, be able to focus on her doctor's appointments and not try and keep track of when I have chemo. I didn't want to need another round."

Charles sighs. "I don't think anyone wishes for cancer in the first place."

Jake stuffs his hands in his jacket pocket. "Yeah, it sucks."

"Jake-y, I want you to know, I'm here for you if you wanna talk."

"Thanks, Charles, I'm just struggling to wrap my head around it, so I'm gonna need that offer." Jake mentions before cracking a small smile.

* * *

The following morning, Terry looks up from his desk as Amy enters the fourth-floor bullpen and greets her as she passes by his desk.

She gives him a mumbled hello back before she goes into the break room, only to leave and come back out into the bullpen moments later.

Terry watches her wander around the bullpen, going in and out of the interrogation room, briefing room and evidence locker. When she arrives again from the evidence locker, he stops her as she passes by his desk again on her way back to the elevator.

"Hey, Santiago, what are you doing?" He asks, standing from his desk and walking around it before looking down to the female sergeant.

Amy looks around the room before switching her gaze back to the superior in front of her. "You haven't happened to see Jake this morning, have you?"

He hesitates for a moment, thinking about from when he arrived at the precinct to now before shaking his head. "No, I haven't, why are you asking?"

"Because I can't seem to find him anywhere."

Charles perks his head up from his desk before jumping up from his seat and joining Terry and Amy. "Jake's missing? Since when?" He questions.

Amy shrugs. "I don't know. I woke up and he wasn't anywhere in the apartment, I called his parents and he's not with them, he's not here, I don't know where he is."

"Have you called his phone?" Terry asks.

The sergeant reaches into her coat pocket before pulling out a phone. "He left it on his bedside table. I checked his screen activity and it said he was on his phone at six this morning and that was the last time before I checked at eight."

Terry nods. "Okay, so we know he was in your apartment at six this morning, anything else?"

Amy shakes her head. "That's everything."

Charles checks his watch before looking around the bullpen before locking his gaze to Amy and Terry again. "Okay, well it's nine-thirty now, he couldn't have gotten far in three hours."

The sergeant sighs and crosses her arms over her chest tightly. "I just can't stop thinking about if something bad has happened." She says, worry clearly present in her voice.

Terry reaches his hands out and puts them against Amy's shoulders. "Hey, I'll get the squad on this, we'll find Jake and wherever he's gotten his tiny head off to."

* * *

"Jake!" Amy calls her husband's name for the hundredth time while clutching her torch as close to her body as possible in an attempt to stop her fingers getting hypothermia.

It was falling toward the third hour of the active search and the once dusk evening had become the bitterly cold January night.

Jake had been gone an estimated fifteen hours now, still with no trace of where he went and no word from him.

Amy looked around, really unable to see anything over the scarf brought up to her nose and the hat pulled down to her eyebrows. Her coat hugged largely around her, somewhat hiding the now five-month-along baby bump.

"Jake!" She yells out again, searching around the park-like area.

"Amy," the sound of her name makes her turn on her heels - it wasn't Jake's voice, as Rosa was standing behind her, "This isn't proving useful." She sighs.

"We can't give up, Rosa, he's still out here." Amy reasons, raising her eyebrows slightly.

"Santiago, it's January, it's nine at night and we've been at this for almost three hours."

Amy glares at the detective. "I don't care, he's my husband and father of our baby, I'm not giving up. What if it was Alicia out here?"

"She wouldn't be because I would have found her three hours ago." Diaz snaps, crossing her arms over her chest.

Amy takes a step closer to the intimidating officer. "Excuse me?"

"I said I would have found her straight away."

A beat of silence passes as Amy takes a step back. "You know what, if you're not going to help find him, then why bother to stay?" She asks, resisting the urge to raise her voice to the detective.

Rosa huffs. "Maybe I will."

"Great, go, what's stopping you?" Amy invites, pointing to the gate a few feet away.

She watches Rosa leave the park and storm off. Once Diaz is out of eye-line, Amy slowly descends herself to sit down on the floor with the blanket of white snow that had fallen the night before and over the course of that day, delicately placed over the ground and on top of basically every building in Brooklyn.

Amy inhales a chilly breath, her breath leaving her lips like smoke as she exhaled. She'd kill for a cigarette following the overwhelming stress of trying to find her husband - who seemed to have disappeared into thin air - but the kicking unborn child was enough of a reason to push away the thought.

She places her gloved hand on top of the subtle curve in her coat where the growing bump is pressed against and smiles as she feels a light push of a kick from underneath. "Hey baby boy," she says with a smile, "or girl." She adds with a little bit of a sigh. The bet still stood, and Amy was still positive she knew the baby would be a boy.

It was a given fact that Santiago's rarely, if ever, have girls. Amy was an only daughter with seven brothers. Jake claimed that because he was only a Santiago by marriage it heightened the chances of them having a girl. Amy wasn't impressed and was still certain Jake would lose the bet in four months time.

"I'm sorry if you're cold, I know I am, but I need to keep looking for your dad. He's probably colder than me, he left his jacket at home so he's only got his beanie on." She says. Under the mountain of layers she put on before they began the search at six that evening she feels another faint kick from the baby. "He's really brave, you know that. He's been through a lot the past couple months but he's never announced defeat, even after a chemo session and he's laying on the couch or curled up in bed after hours of non-stop throwing up, he's still able to crack a joke or smile at anything that's remotely funny."

"Amy!" A voice makes Amy stop talking down to the bump. It gets louder as it's yelled out a second time.

She turns around to see Terry coming straight toward her.

"Yeah?" She asks, slowly but surely getting back up to her feet.

"I've found Jake!" He replies, stopping in front of her before turning around and going back the way he had just come from.

Without a second word, Amy is following Terry through the park in silence. They walk for a minute, going past the play equipment that was layered with snow and through the trees that they hadn't searched yet - only because she swore there wasn't anything behind them, but apparently she was wrong. The bench hidden by the trees had a light dusting of snow on and sat on it was her husband, wearing only a long-sleeved shirt, jeans and the same beanie he had first worn after Gina had shaved his head.

A second of staring at his later, Jake looked up from the floor to see her and Terry.

"I'll leave you two alone for a moment." Terry whispers to Amy before retreating back behind the trees to inform Charles and Holt that he had found him.

Jake stands from the bench as Amy approaches him, glaring straight at him. "Ames, please let me expl-" He begins before being cut off by his wife wrapping her arms around his body, hugging him as tightly as she could.

"I am so glad you're okay." She mumbles into his chest, smiling widely as she did.

Before Jake can fall into the warm embrace, she's suddenly pushing him away, angrily hitting him repetitively on the arms.

"Why the hell did you vanish in the middle of the night?" She asks loudly as she continued to hit him.

He pushes her off of him before shoving his hands into his pockets. He shrugs. "I don't know," he sighs, "I had to think."

"About what?" Amy wonders, staring intensely to her husband. "I thought you were hurt, Jake! Or worse, dead!"

"I'm so sorry." He steps forward, trying to put his hand on his wife's shoulder.

She takes a step back and glares at him further. "I am so mad at you."

Jake nods. "And you have every right to be," he sighs, looking to the floor slightly, "It's just I was scared and I freaked out and ran away."

"Scared of what?" Amy asks, loosening her stare against Jake.

"Of having another cycle of chemo, Ames," he replies, his voice raising slightly - although he didn't mean for it to. "And I'm scared of what's gonna happen if it doesn't work. I didn't think of that before because I thought it would work exactly how it's supposed to and it didn't and I've got to do it all over again and - and what if this one doesn't do what it's supposed to again? I'm gonna have to have another cycle and then another and it makes it seem now that it's never gonna stop and that this is what my life is gonna be like now, just non-stop trips to the doctors and the hospital and I don't want that, I want to be able to help you and our baby and I'm scared that soon I'm not going to be able to because of what the chemo's going to do to me." He explains, tears glistening in his eyes.

Amy steps forward and reaches her hands out to grab his. "Why didn't you tell me?" She asks.

Jake pauses for a moment as he raised his hand and removed the tears falling down the side of his face. "Because I didn't want to burden you with my fears when we've got to think about bringing a baby into this world in a few months."

Call it the pregnancy hormones or her vulnerable husband, but when he stops talking, Amy finds herself crying too.

She pulls him in for another hug, tightening her arms around his torso as hard as she could without putting too much pressure against her growing bump. "Never feel as though you should keep something that's scaring you to yourself, I will always try and help, okay? Your fears are not a burden, Jake, they never have been and they never will be."

Jake nods, smiling widely to Amy as she pulled away, returning the smile.

The hug between them is broken off as Charles bursts through the trees, calling out loudly for his friend before hugging the other detective tightly too.

"Oh, Jake-y, I was so worried about you!" Boyle says against his friend as he squeezed against him tightly, making Jake slowly put his hand against the shorter detective's back, falling into the hug slightly.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave Comments and Kudos, even if the comment is like one word, it really does make my day and I love to see how people are reacting to my stories!
> 
> Anyway, I will see you in the next chapter! Have a great week!


End file.
